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THE DEVELOPMENT /i*^-. 

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FRENCH MONARCHY 

UNDER LOUIS VL LE GROS 
I I 08- I I 37 



A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF ARTS 

LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE OF THE UNIVERSITY 

OF CHICAGO, IN CANDIDACY FOR THE 

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF 

PHILOSOPHY 







BY 

JAMES WESTFALL THOMPSON, A.B. 



CHICAGO 

^be "Qlnlverstts ot Cbicago ipress 

1895 



Pub.. 
?00 ^l 






^ 



TO 

BENJAMIN S. TERRY, Ph.D., 

PROFESSOR OF MEDIEVAL AND ENGLISH HISTORY, 

IN 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, 

THIS STUDY OF THE FRENCH FEUDAL MONARCHY 

IS DEDICATED 

WITH THE HOMAGE OF 

THE AUTHOR 



CONTENTS. 



Bibliography ----- vii-xii 
Introduction : Louis VI. and the French Mon- 
archy ----- 1-16 

Part I. The War of the Vexin - - - - 17-21 
" II. The Liberation of the Realm - - 22-30 
" III. The Court of the King and its Judicial Func- 
tions under Louis VI. - - - 31-45 
" IV. Administrative Organization 

Central Administration - - - 46-54 

Local Administration - . - 55—56 

" V. ' Feudal and Public Economy - - 57-62 

" VI. Relation of Louis VI. to the Church - - 63-74 

" VII. King and Communes. Royalty and the Popular 

Classes - ... - 75-91 

" VIII. Foreign Policy and Politics - - 92-111 

Summary of the Reign of Louis VI. - -112-113 

Biographical Note - - - - 114 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

The following list is as exhaustive a bibliography as could be 
compiled. In the nature of things it could be amplified by 
researches in the Bibliotheque Nationale. No one who has not 
learned them from his own experience, can realize the difficulties 
under which an American student labors, in making a thorough 
study of European — and especially mediaeval history, so far from 
the sphere of action. Hitherto, in Graduate Schools, the emphasis 
has been almost wholly laid upon American history and institu- 
tions. 

Almost all the chronicles cited may be found in the Recueil 
des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, Paris, 1738— 1876, 23 
vols. Edited by Bouquet, Brial, Pardessus, Delisle, and others. 
Tomes XII. to XV. contain the sources of the period under con- 
sideration. Reference to these volumes have been cited simply 
"H. F." In chronicles or letters of special importance, fuller 
indication is made. The most important 

NARRATIVE SOURCES. 

Sugerius, Vita Ludovici VI. Grossi sive Crassi regis, Philippi I. filii. Edition 
of Molinier. Collection de Textes de la Societe de T Ecole des Charles. Paris, 1887. 
This is uniformly cited unless that of the Societe de VHistoi^-e de France is 
mentioned. The latter is : 
Sugerius, Vita Ludovici VI. Grossi, etc. 

— Liber de Rebus sua adininistratione gestis. 
WiLLELMUS, Vita Sugerii,abbatis S. Dionysii. Edition of Lecoy de la Marche. 

Paris, 1867. 
Ordericus Vitalis, Historica Ecclesiastica. Societe de VHistoire de France. 

Edition of Leprevost, 5 vols. Paris, 1838-55. 
Galbertus Brugensis, Passio Karoli comitis Flandriae. Collection de Textes 

de la Societe de PAcole des Charles, Edition of Pirenne. Paris 189 1. 
Chronicon Morigniacensis Monasterii, ord. S. Benedicti, H. F., XII. 
Henrici Huntendunsis, Historia Angloru7n, Edition of Arnold, Rolls Series. 

London, 1879. 
WiLLELMi Malmsbiriensis, De Gestis Regum Anglorum, Edition of Stubbs, 

Rolls Series, 2 vols.. Ibid. London, 1887. 

vii 



Vlll BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

DOCUMENTARY SOURCES. 

Epistolae Ludovici VI., H. F., XV. 

— Sugerii " " 

— St. Bernardi " " 

— Ivonis Carnotensis, " XII. 

LUCHAIRE, Louis VI. (le Gros); Annales de sa Vie et de son Rlgne {1081-1137), 

avec une Introduction historique. Paris, 1 890. 
Ordonnances des Rois de France de la I 11^ race jusqu'en 13 14. 22 vols., Paris, 

1723-1849. Tomes I, VII, XI, XII. 
Tardif, Monuments historiqties, 2 vols., Paris, 1866. 
Teulet, Layettes du Tresor des Chartes, 3 vols., Paris, 1863, Vol. I. 
ViOLLET, Une Grande Chroniqtie latine de Saint Denis. Observations pour 

servir a Vhistoire critiqzie des Oeuvres de Suger, in Bibliothique deV Ecole des 

Chartes, XXXIV, 1873. 
Robert, Histoire et bullaire die fiape Calixte II. (1119-1124). Essaide Restitution. 

2 vols., Paris, 1 89 1. 
Langlois, Textes Relatifs a V Histoire du Parlement depuis les Origines jusqu' en 

131 4. Collection de Textes de la Societe de r£,cole des Chartes Paris, 1888. 
Mabillon, De Re Diplojnatica. Second Edition. Paris, 1709. 
Brussel, Nouvel Examen de I Usage general des fiefs en France. 2 vols., 

Paris, 1727. 
Collection de documents inedits sur V Histoire de France. 

Guerard, Cartulaire deTEglise Notre- Da7ne de Paris. 4 vols. Paris, 1850. 

— Cartulaire de St. Denis, 6 vols. Paris, 1839-1852. 

— CartuLaire delabbaye de Saint Pire a Chartres. 2 vols. Paris, 1840. 
Du Cange, Glossarium, New Edition, 10 vols. Paris, 1883. 

AUTHORITIES. 

Luchaire, Histoire des Instittitions Monarchiques de la France sous les pretniers 
Capetiens, (987-1180). 2 vols. Second Edition. Paris, 1891. Contains 
Appendix of original documents. 

— Mattuel des Institutions Fran^aises. Paris, 1892. 

— Les Communes Frangaises a V Epoque des Capetietts directs. Paris, 1890. 

— La Cour du Roi et ses fonctions judiciaires sous le Rigne de Louis VI. (l 108- 
II 37), in Annales de la Faculte des Lettres de Bourdeaux, 1 880. 

— Remarques sur la Succession des Grands Officiers de la Couronne, {1108- 
I180). In Annales de la Faculte des Lettres de Bourdeaux, 1881. 

ViOLLET, Histoire du Droit Fran^ais. Paris, 1886. 
Y'LKC'R, Les Origines de Pancienne France. 2 vols. Paris, 1886. 
Combes, UAbbe Suger: Histoii-e de son Ministh'e et de sa Regence. Paris, 1853. 
HUGUENIN, £tude stir I abbe Suger. Paris, 1855. 
Robert, Histoire du Pape Calixte II. Paris, 1891. 

VuiTRY, Etudes stir le Regime financier de la France avant la Revolution de 
1789. 3 vols. Paris, 1878-1883. Vol. I. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. IX 

Pardessus, Essai Historique sur P Organisation judiciaire et f Administration de 

la justice. Paris, 185 1. 
Henrion, De lAutorite judiciai^'e en France. Paris, 1827. 
DULAURE, Histoire de Paris. Paris, 1829. (Fourth Edition). 
Brequigny, Recherches sur les Communes et les Bourgeoisies. Preface to 

Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, tomes XI, XII. 
G'R.O?,^,, Gild Merchant. 2 vols. Oxford, 1 890. 
Daniel, Histoij'e de la Milice fran^aise et des Changements qui s'y sont faits 

depuis r eiablissement de la Monarchie francaise dans les Gaules jusqu' a la 

Jifi du Regne de Louis le Grand. 2 vols. Amsterdam, 1724. 
Gaillard, Histoire de la Rivalite de la France et de P Angleterre. 6 vols. 

Paris, 1818. Vol. I. 
Lamprecht, Etude sur PAtat iconomiqtie de la France pendant la premilre 

partie du Moyen-Age. Translated by A. Marignan. Paris, 1889. 
BOUTARIC, Institutions Militaires de la France. Paris, 1863. 
Glasson, Histoire Du Droit des Institutions de la France. To be complete in 

ten volumes. Paris, 1884, ff. Vols. IV-V. 
Imbart de la Tour, Les Elections episcopales dans PEglise de France du IX^ 

au XIII^ Siecles. Paris, 1 89 1. 
Baron de Nervo, Les Finances fran^aises sous Pancienne Monarchie, la 

Republique,la Consulat et P Empire. 3. vols. Paris, 1863. Vol. I. 
Emile Lair, Des Hazites Cours Politiques en Frattce et a P Etranger. Paris, 

1889. 
GuiZOT, History of Civilization in France. New York. Hazlitt's Translation. 

Many editions. 
Rambaud, Histoii'e de la Civilisation fran(^aise. 2 vols. Fifth Edition. Paris, 

1893. 
Giesebrecht, Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit. 5 vols. Vol. III., Fifth 

Edition. Leipzig, 1890. 
Pfister, Atudes sur le Regne de Robert le Pieux, Paris 1885. 
Petit, Histoire des Dues de Bourgogne de la Race capetienne. 5 vols. Dijon, 

1885. Vol. L 
Chevalier, Repertoire des sources historiques du Moyen-Age — Bio-bibliographie. 
Dareste, Histoire de P Administration et des progres dti pouvoir royal en 

France. 2 vols. Paris, 1848. 
C. P. Marie-Haas, D Administration de la France. Four volumes in two. 

Paris, 1861. Vol. I. 
Aubert, L.e Parlement de Paris de Philippe le Bel a Charles VII. (1314-1422). 

Paris, 1886. 
Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England. 5 vols. Third 

Edition. Oxford, 1876-1877. Vol. V. 
— The Reign of William Rufus. 2. vols. Oxford, 1882. 
Stubbs, Constitutional History of England. 3 vols. Fifth Edition. Oxford, 

1891. Vol. L 



X BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

'Pa.i.G'KKVE., History of England and Normandy. 4 vols. Vol. IV. London, 1864. 
Ranke, Franzosische Geschichte, Werke, VIII. 

'NoKGA.T^, England under the Angevin Kings. 2 vols. London, 1887. 
Walker, On the Increase of Royal Power in France under Philip Augustus. 

Leipzig, 1888. 
TniEKViY, Histoi7'e du Tiers- Aiat. Paris, 1853. 

— Lettres sur PHistoire de France. Seventh Edition. Paris, 1859. 
'Rxy'tiOVAViT), Histoire du Droit Mtmicipal en France. Paris, 1829. 2 vols. 
Clamageran, Histoire de Tlmpdt en France. 2 vols. Paris, 1867. 
PiGEONNEAU, Histoire du Comttierce de la France. 2 vols. Paris, 1889. 
Levasseur, Histoire des Classes Ouvriires en France. 4 vols. Paris, 1859. 
Brentano, Introduction to Montchretien, Traite de V CEconomie politique, 

Paris, 1889. 
Brentano, On the History atid Develop/nent of Gilds. London, 1870. 
Schaeffner, Geschichte der Rechtsverfassung Frankreichs. 4 vols. Frank- 
fort, 1845-9. Vol. 2. 
Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy. Philadelphia, 1886. 
Langlois, Le R^gne de Phillippe le Hardi. Paris, 1887. 
Secretan, Essai sur la Feodalite. Lausanne, 1858. 
'LAUKKt^T, La Feodalite et TEglise. Second Edition. Paris, 1865. 
Bibliothique des Hautes Etudes: * 

GiRY, Histoire de la Ville de Saint Omer. Paris, 1877. 
— Etablissements de Rouen. 2 vols. Paris, 1885. 

Le Franc, Histoire de la Ville de Noyen. Paris 1887. 
Wauters, Les Liberies Commuttales. Essai sur leur origines et leurs premiers 

developpeinents en Belgique, dans le Nord de la France et sur les bords 

du Rhin. 2 vols. Bruxelles, 1872. 
Taillar, Notice sur Vorigine de la formation des villages du Nord de la France. 

Douai, 1862. 
HiRSCH, Studien zur Geschichte Konig Ludwigs VII. von Frankreich (1119- 

1160). Leipzig, 1892. 
Lalanne, Dictionnaire historique. Second Edition. Paris, 1887. 
Cheruel, Dictionnaire historique des Institutions de la France. 2 vols. Paris, 1 880. 
Renault, Abrege Chronologiqtie de V Histoire de France. 2 vols. Paris, 1823. 
'L.O^G^O'^, Atlas historique de la France. Troisieme Livraison. Paris, 1889. 
Phillips, Der Ursprutig des Regalienrechts in Franh-eich. Ha,l]e, 1870. 
Thiel, Die politische Thatigkeit des Abtes Bernhard von Clairvaux. 
HORES, Das Bistum Cambrai, seine polit. und kirchl. Beziehungen zu Deutsch- 

land, Frankreich und Flandern, und Entwicklung der Commtute von Cam- 

brai {iog2~i I gi). Leipzig, 1882. 

SPECIAL ARTICLES, OR ESSAYS. 
Revue de deux Mondes, Oct., 1873, p. 581. Origines de V Administration 
royale en France. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. XI 

Revue historique, XXXVII. (1888). Luchaire : Louis le Gros et son 

Palatins. 
Revue historique, XLII. (1890). Langlois : Les Origi?ies du Parlement de 

Paris, 
Revue historique, XLIV. (1890). Prou: De la Nature du Service militaire 

par les Roturiers aux XI^ et XII^ sihles. 
Revue historique, XLIX. (1892). Leroux : La Royaute fran^aise et le 

Saint Empire Remain. 
Revue des Questions historiques, XLIX. Vacandard : St. Bernard et la 

Royatite fraticaise. 
NouvELLE Revue historique de Droit francais et etranger, VIII. 
(1884) pp. 139, 267, 441. Prou : Les Couttmies de Lorris et leur propagation 
aux XII^ et XIII^ slides. 
Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions : 

XXVII. 184(1754). Lebeuf : Eclaircissements sur la chronologie des rignes 

de Louis le Gros et de Louis le Jezme. 
XXIX. 268 (1760). Bonamy: Remarques sur le litre de Tres-Chretien 

donne aux rois de France, et sur le temps ou cet usage a commence. 
XXIX. 273 (1760). Bonamy : Recueil d'autorites qui servent a prouvet que 
longtemps avant le rigne de Louis XI. nos rois ont ete decores du litre 
de Tres-Chretien. 
XLIII. 345 (1777). Gaillard : Des Causes de la haine personelle qu'on a 

cru remarque entre Louis VI. et Henri I., roi d''Angleter7-e. 
XLIII. 421 (1778). Brequigny : Observations sur le testament de Guil- 

laume X., due d' Aquitaine et comte de Poitou, mort en 1 137. 
IV. 489 (1805). Brial : Recherches historiques et diplomatiques sur la veri- 
table epoque de Vassociation de Louis le Gros au trone avec le litre de 
Roi designe. 
VII. 129(1806). Brial: Aclaircissement d'un passage de V abbe Suger rela- 

tif a Vhistoire du Berry. 
IX. (1886). Luchaire : Sur deux monogrammes de Louis le Gros. 
Seances et Travaux de l'Academie des Sciences morales et poli- 
tiques : 

XVI. 161 (1888). Luchaire: Les Milices communales et la Royaute cape- 
tienne. 

GENERAL HISTORIES. 

yiKViTiii, Histoire de Fraitce. 17 vols. Paris, 1840. 

SiSMONDi, Histoire des Pranfais. 31 vols. Paris, 1821-1844. 

MiCHELET, Histoire de France. 17 vols. Paris, 1871-1874. 

Mably, Collection cotnpltte des Oeuvres de I' abbe Mably. 15 vols. Paris, I794~ 

1795. Vol. 2. 
Velly, Villaret, Garnier, etc., Histoire de France. 26 vols. Paris, 1808- 

1812. 
Kitchen, History of France. Third Edition. Oxford, 1892. 3 vols. Vol. I. 



Xli BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Popular but wholly uncritical works, or articles, are : 

DeCarne, Fondateurs de PUnite Fran^aise. 2 vols. 1856. " Suger," 
Baudrillart, Histoire du Luxe. 4 vols. Paris, 1881. Vol. III., ch. v., 

" Suger et son rdle dans le luxe." 
Clement, in Le Moniteur Universal, 1853, pp. 1391, 139S, 1427. December 

16, 17, 25, 1853. " Portraits Historiques — Sugar." 

Other writings which will be at once recognized are occasion- 
ally cited, but the body of the dissertation has been built upon 
the above. 



INTRODUCTION. 

LOUIS VI. AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

"M. Thierry remarks very truly that every people has two 
histories — the one interior, national and domestic, the other 
exterior. The former he goes on to describe as the history of 
its laws and institutions, and its political changes — in one word, 
of its action upon itself ; the latter he refers to the action of the 
people upon others, and the part it may claim in influencing the 
common destinies of the world. Of these two histories the first 
cannot, of course, be fully written till the people has reached the 
term of its political individuality, neither can the second be 
written till the farthest effect of its influence can be traced and 
estimated.'" 

These words are profound political philosophy. The first 
category eminently characterizes the history of mediaeval France, 
at least until the reign of Philip Augustus, when France was 
nearing the term of her political individuality and was beginning 
to appear upon the wide arena of European politics. In order 
properly to understand the growth of a state we must consider 
it in its origin and termination. Between these limits all is 
formative, institutional. The Middle Ages were essentially an 
institutional period, when forms and customs were in the making. 
They were the gigantic crucible into which all the greatness and 
grandeur of the ancient civilized world was plunged ; they were 
the crucible out of which the states and nations and institutions 
of modern Europe emerged. Among these institutions there 
was one which was all-prevalent : feudalism, in ever-varying 
form, was the institution of the Middle Ages."" 

' Merivale. History of the Romans under the Empire, Fourth edition, 
1863. Vol. I. Introd., p. 8, citing Amed^e Thierry, 

'Yet feudalism does not present the phenomena of social decay, but of 
social progress. It was an attempt to regulate the disorder due to the weak- 

I 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

Feudalism is the accompaniment of a declining civilization. 
When a great state is passing into decadence, class interests 
usurp the higher, public interests and authority. The Frank 
monarchy was organized under feudal forms because the political 
features of Teutonic life had become more or less assimilated 
with those of the decaying Roman imperium. When the Romano- 
Frank monarchy also declined, the feudal regime was intensified, 
in degree. And yet, during the entire tenth century, when its 
power was least, the Carlovihgian dynasty struggled to maintain 
the traditional character of the monarchy, a-nd was, as a conse- 
quence, in antagonism with the excessive feudal tendency. More 
than this — all the kings of this century, whether they appertained 
to the Carlovingian house or to the family of Robert the Strong, 
sought with varying energy and unequal success to maintain the 
prerogatives of monarchial authority against the encroachments 
of feudalism. This was a steadfast purpose in the mind of the 
representatives of the rival houses, as well those who were kings 
as those who sought to be kings. The difference lay in this : 
the Carlovingian monarchy reposed on past traditions, past per- 
sons, past powers. The glamor of the great days of the great 
Charles tinged it with an alienated majesty and made it seem, to 
the infatuated minds of Louis IV. and Lothar, what it was not. 
This accounts for Louis' rash attempt to conquer Normandy, and 
Lothar's equally rash effort to recover Lotharingia. The age was 
not as great as their ideas. On the other hand, the house of 
Robert was self-reliant. It had no force not of itself on which 
to rely ; it had no taint of outworn sovereignty. Moreover, the 
personal force of Robert and Odo and the two Hughs was 
superior to the personal force of their royal rivals, although that 
was not as despicable as is customarily believed.' 

The later Carlovingians were not weak ; they were not deficient 
in activity and energy. The legend that they were morally wedk 
is due partly to the natural analogy between the last days of the 
Merovingians and the Carlovingians, and also to a failure to 

ness of government. For some wise words on this head, see Stubbs, Bened. 
Peterburg. (Rolls Series), II. Introd. xxxv. 
' Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 27. 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

observe with due regard that time and circumstance wonderfully 
modify the face of events. This is one reason. Partly also 
because it is the irony of history that men who fight a losing 
cause almost never — Hannibal is a sovereign exception — how- 
ever great be their efforts, win admiration. Louis d'Outremer and 
Lothar were men of approved courage, perseverance and a moral 
superiority above their immediate predecessors. The trouble 
was that they tried to do too much. They used their resources 
with a vigor and lavishness which, if they had moved with the 
current would have made them princes great indeed. But the 
alienated majesty of the empire, the vast continuity of force 
which had never been balked from Pepin d'Heristal and Charles 
Martel downwards till the day of Louis Debonnaire, made these 
later kings of the same house ill brook a substitution of suzerainty 
for sovereignty. 

The responsibility of this new situation lies more at the feet 
of the earlier successors of Charles the Great. If Louis Debon- 
naire dissolved the sheaf of his authority and suffered the grain 
to be taken, what could his successors do with the straw? It was 
a difficult thing to build up power upon a bundle of negatives, 
and this state of things was aggravated by the coming of the 
Northmen. The later Carlovingians were obliged to accept the 
results of the triple revolution which tended to suppress the 
central power, in fact, though they saved their dignity by not 
doing so in law, namely : (i) The transformation of the benefice 
in fief. (2) The usurpation and hereditary transmission of public 
functions. (3) The hierarchichal constitution of feudalism, which 
tended to make the king more a suzerain than a sovereign.' 

The cardinal errors of the Carlovingians were twofold : 

1. A failure to direct the revolution, working itself out in pro- 
cess of time, which they might have done. They tried to stem 
the current and hence were swept where the current listed. 

2. A failure to confine themselves to the limits assigned by 
treaty of Verdun. The bauble of empire was too attractive to 
Charles the Bald. Lothar wasted his strength in a vain effort to 
recover Lotharingia. He asserted the sterile pretensions of a 

•Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 28. 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

bygone royalty, instead of seeking to keep that that he had a 
compact whole. It was his interest to keep the royal domain, as 
much as possible a solid political entity, with a vast circumscrip- 
tion of feudal groups. A homogeneous territorial basis for 
royalty would have been the surest and most material aid for a 
gradual and progressive increase of royal power. But a solid 
territorial basis is exactly what the Carlovingians lacked, and 
exactly what their successors had. The Carlovingians were, in 
987, neither proprietors nor vassals. Louis V. was lord of Laon, 
but only a tenant at will,' while Hugh Capet was proprietor of 
a goodly portion of Gaul. This central position of his domain 
was a most substantial fact in his favor. The territorial dispro- 
portion between the positions of the two was what shifted the 
balance of power, at Senlis, on that day in July 987, for Hugh 
Capet had lands, money and men.^ 

The election of Hugh Capet was not a political and social 
revolution, assuring the triumph of the feudal polity, much less a 
national movement. It was hardly more than a change of 
dynasty, inspired and realized by the church in order to establish 
in the hands of a powerful feudal family the Romano-Frank 
ecclesiastical monarchy of the west Carlovingians. The revolu- 
tion of 987 made the Frank monarchy (for it was not yet French) 
a vivid reality and not a phantom. As that was, it was, a mon- 
archy by divine right, absolute in principle and theoretically unit- 
ing the powers and prerogatives of sovereignty. It cannot be 
said that the accession of the house of Capet to the throne 
marks the beginning of a new monarchy in harmony with the new 
social state. The view that the revolution of 987 was meant to 

'Richer, II., 51. 

2 " Two of the great rivers of Gaul, the Seine and the Loire, flowed through 

the royal domains, but the king was wholly cut off from the sea Thus 

surrounded by their own vassals the early kings of the house of Paris had far 
less dealings with powers beyond their own kingdom than their Carlovingian 
predecessors. They were thus able to make themselves the great power of 
Gaul before they stood forth in a wide field as one of the powers of Europe." 
Freeman, Hist. Geog., I., 3 ff. 

On the extent of Hugh Capet's lands and the character of the ducal title 
see Pfister, Le Rigne de Robert le Pietix, livre II., chap. iii. 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

harmonize, and so did the unity of the realm with the partition 
of sovereignty, that it was the simultaneous and equal expression 
of each, is plausible, but not true. Hugh Capet and his suc- 
cessors, in word and deed, sought to act as kings, and did so, 
save in so far as they were limited by the intervention of the 
great barons. But they were wise enough not to try to do more 
than they were able. They knew their powers and were content 
to exercise them within the limits of efficiency. 

The accident of birth deprived the early Capetians of that 
"divinity which doth hedge a king" — that impalpable force 
which time alone can bring — but this moral deficiency was 
largely compensated for by the material power at their command. 
The barons elected Odo and Rudolph and finally Hugh, because 
each united material possession and moral force. When Hugh 
was elected, he became heir to all the imprescriptible rights and 
indefinable privileges which attended his predecessor. 

" The king had a whole arsenal of rights : Old rights of 
Carlovingian royalty, preserving the remembrance of imperial 
power, which the study of the Roman law was to resuscitate, 
transforming these apparitions into formidable realities ; old rights 
conferred by coronation which were impossible to define and 
hence incontestable ; and rights of suzerainty, newer and more 
real, which were definitely determined and codified, as feudalism 
developed, and which joined to the other rights mentioned 
above, made the king proprietor of France. These are the ele- 
ments that Capetian royalty contributed to the play of fortuitous 
circumstances. Everything turned to his profit : the miseries of 
the church, which, in the midst of a violent society claimed the 
royal protection, from one end of the kingdom to the other, and 
also the efforts of the middle classes to be admitted with defined 

rights into feudal society His (the king's) authority was 

thus exercised outside the limits of his own particular domain, 
throughout the whole kingdom." ' 

The monarchy founded by Hugh Capet partook of a double 
character. He was the greatest feudal lord on the soil of Gaul 

'Lavisse, General View of Political History of Europe. (English Transla- 
tion, New York, 1891, p. 61.) 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

before he inherited the domain of the ancient kings, their rights, 
and the prestige attached to the idea of royalty. Thus when he 
became king he was stronger than his immediate predecessors. 
He was the heir of past power and place, with also, be it said, the 
deficiencies attending that estate in later years ; but he was also the 
holder of inchoate and potential rights, destined to be worked 
out in the process of feudalization and the progress of kingship. 
The edifice of Capetian royal authority of which Robert the 
Strong laid the foundation, and to which Hugh Capet annexed 
the capstone, was made of various elements. 

1. It consisted of the mass of proprietary rights, which were 
bound up in the sheaf of his feudal superiority, whether as 
immediate or indirect lord. 

2. It comprised all the historic rights and privileges of the 
former Carlovingian kings — political and ecclesiastical, theo- 
retical and actual. 

3. Hugh Capet's title of dux Francorum, conferred new 
rights of a particular character, which in 987 were blended with 
his royal authority. 

Although predominantly feudal, the French monarchy had a 
double character. Its theories and its practices were to a consid- 
erable degree royal. In addition to those old rights of Carlo- 
vingian royalty ; in addition to other ancient rights conferred by 
coronation and the newer and more real rights of suzerainty, 
there were certain specific rights which the king had from the 
beginning : (i) The nominal if not efficient right of regulating 
public benefices. (2) The ascription of public authority.' (3) 
The regale, too, was less a feudal than a royal prerogative. 

The king's ecclesiastical sovereignty conveyed in the term 
regale was never so divided as his political authority. Some 
remnants of supremacy were left in localities not forming a 
portion of the royal domain. This state of things was a result 
of the historical combination of circumstances. The church was 

' " It was accepted, theoretically as a fundamental principle, that no 
crown vassal could lawfully carry on war, otherwise than immediately under his 
sovereign or by royal command" (Palgrave, History of England and Nor- 
mandy, III., 52). 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

the depository of the Roman tradition of unity and centraliza- . 
tion, taken up and continued by the Merovingians and Austra- 
sians^ which in the form of a semi-ecclesiastical imperial authority 
culminated in Charles the Great. In the break-up of the Empire, 
this regalian principle escaped the shipwreck of the Carlovingian 
dynasty owing to the integrity of the ecclesiastical constitution 
which preserved the lines of bishoprics and metropolitanates. 
The Church, in spite of feudal infiltration, was less impaired 
than any other institution and received a large accession of 
power in the tenth century when the revolution of 987 was 
carried to a successful issue by the great churchmen of Gaul. 
Thereby it was predetermined that the church and the king 
should cooperate in the development of the French monarchy. 

This relation existing between the throne and the Galilean 
Church was never positively broken. The bond was often 
severely strained but it was never ruptured. Meanwhile, the 
kings, being defenders of the church in their realm against the 
turbulence and avarice of the baronage, insisted that royal juris- 
diction applied alike to secular and ecclesiastical affairs. In the 
eleventh century, however, the royal power reached its lowest 
point and feudal usurpations grew more common, so that, owing 
to continued vexations, the kings came to recognize the right of 
the bishops with their chapters, the chapters with the abbeys, the 
archdeacons with the prevots or canons of the churches. But 
the rights of each party were so illy defined in the Middle Ages, 
their efficacy depended so much upon personal energy and will, 
that the crown never lost absolutely, nor did the clergy or great 
lay lords ever gain wholly, the disputed prerogative.' 

One naturally recurs to Germany in considering this question 
of the regale. It was not due to the good character of the 
Galilean bishops, when compared with their German brethren, 
that Gaul was spared the' conflict that rent the empire asunder. 
In France the pope already had a measure of authority and was 
therewith content; while in Germany he was driven to antagon- 
ism because the imperiousness of emperors like Henry III. abso- 

' Revue Hist., XLII. (1890). Langlois, Les Origines du Farlement de 
Paris, 87. 



3 INTRODUCTION. 

lutely barred him out. Another reason will also explain the 
difference between Gaul and Germany in this quarrel. In 
Germany, a// the bishoprics were at the disposal of the emperor. 
In Gaul, this right was distributed among the feudal lords. 
Thus the power of the king over the church was less redoubt- 
able, and the pope having less to fear, had less cause to contest 
the royal prerogative. This comparative immunity afforded the 
French kings an opportunity to develop their ecclesiastical 
authority to such a point that when the popes at last did try to 
assert Gregorian pretensions, his own power was shivered for 
his pains. 

If the king's position, however, differed in kind and not in 
degree merely from that of the baronage, the king was yet, at the 
same time, by his quality as suzerain, by his official and private 
relations with the aristocracy, profoundly involved in the mesh 
of the feudal regime. His suzerainty even was for a long time 
more theoretical than real. The Capetian monarchy so far sub- 
mitted to the seigneurial regime as to become far more feudal than 
royal. Yet the theory of royal authority remained with the 
monarchy. In the tenth and eleventh centuries feudal force 
was stronger than royal theory. But the day came with Louis 
VI., and even Louis VII., weak as he was, and Philip Augustus, 
when the acts of the crown began to modify the feudal regime. 
Then the theories were active sources of power, for they gave the 
monarchy a basis of legality upon which to operate.' 

The feudal regime in Gaul attained its ultimate form in the 
eleventh century. But it is not to be forgotten that epochs and 
eras shade into one another. There are few cataclysms in his- 
torical development like the swift volcanic formations of the 
geologic world. History works itself out in a series of degrada- 
tions and a corresponding series of ascensions ; on the stepping- 
stones of its dead self the world rises to higher things. We are 

' There is no philosophical study, in English, of these features of the 
Capetian monarchy. The reader is referred to Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., livre I. 
Flach, Les Origines de rancienne France, Vol. I., which contains a good deal of 
value, but the observations are scattered. The best account is Pfister, Le Rigne 
de Robert le Pieux, livre II. 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

apt to believe" that the era of the Carlovingian decline was 
chaotic ; and yet there are a few rare lights traversing the gloom 
of that gigantic melee of peoples, and races, and languages, and 
manners, and faiths, and institutions. The tangled star-dust of 
a dissolving world rounds into new forms, and finally a new 
world emerges, occupying the centuries lying between the ninth 
and the fifteenth centuries, i. e., the six centuries of feudal 
Europe. 

We are apt to think of feudalism as a hard and fast mould 
into which Europe was poured and held, as in a strait- jacket. 
Yet the real truth is that the characteristic of the age is its 
instability. The relations of man and man in the same region 
differ. This particularism everywhere dominant makes every case 
an exception. The relation of man and man has not the force 
of a sanctioned principle. Local customs are not written ; they 
are essentially mobile until they are hardened into form by the 
will of some petty despot. And yet out of this reign of individual 
absolutism, circumscribed perhaps by the banlieue merely, was to 
come forth an absolutism the most absolute, and circumscribed 
only by the limits of France. The history of the transition from 
the scattered sovereignty of Hugh Capet to the self-centred 
absolutism of Louis XIV. is the history of th6 progress of a 
policy never exceeded for consistency of execution, craft in 
application and patience in development. 

Because the French monarchy did become so absolute we are 
apt to believe it became so by sheer force. The word "absolute" 
is misleading — we think of tyrants like Ivan the Terrible of 
Russia, and the praetorian guard of the Caesars. But the French 
absolutism was not built up, like the Roman imperium, bv the 
power of the sword. ^ We are apt to think that the king grew 
strong because, as chance availed, he usurped the right to do such 
and such a thing. But the French monarchy was a reign of law 
throughout. The reign of Louis IX. was splendid in its achieve- 
ments, yet he never took one ounce of new power or an ascrip- 
tion of authority, or one rood of land, without legal sanction. 

'The Ordonnance of Orleans (1439) of Charles VII. is really almost the 
conclusion of absolutism. 



lo INTRODUCTION. 

Even the unscrupulous kings like Philip Augustus and Philip the 
Fair covered their conduct with the guise of law. By fictions and 
technicalities they contrived to give the monarchy a sanction for 
its acts. This strictly legal character of the development of the 
French monarchy is a point which has received far too little 
attention. It is essential to keep this legal phase in mind, for 
only by so doing can its evolution be truly understood. 

In the feudal principle, however, lay alike the weakness and 
the strength of the early Capetian monarchy. Jealousy of the 
over-lord on the part of a half hundred petty princes forced the 
crown to move guardedly. But in the slowness of the growth 
of the crown was the assurance of its permanence. Absorption 
of powers on the part of royalty was so gradual that the barons 
failed to see, until too late, the import of a movement, which, 
while evolutionary in process, was revolutionary in effect. 

The increase of royal power in France involved three pro- 
cesses : (i) The recognition of the hereditary principle in succes- 
sion. (2) The transfer of all sovereign functions to the crown. 
(3) The incorporation of fiefs. 

In the tenth century the principle of succession by inherit- 
ance had hardly enough force to legitimize it in the eyes of men 
of the time. A curious phenomenon comes to light. Hugh 
Capet became king by elective right, the address of Archbishop 
Adalberon setting forth the legitimacy of elective monarchy, and 
repudiating the doctrine of hereditary right to the throne.' And 
yet we see that at once the progress of events begins gradually to 
push aside the theory. The kings of the Capetian house during 
more than three centuries had male offspring; and, as always 
happens, out of the fact developed a law — that of hereditary suc- 
cession. But the uncertainty of the right explains why the first 
six kings compromised, so to speak, with the elective principle, 
and took the precaution of always securing the coronation of 
their successors in their lifetime (cooptation),^ until by the time 

' Richer IV., c. 11. 

2 Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 59, points out that association upon the throne was 
also practiced by the later Carlovingians, at least by Lothar in 979. 
' Nevertheless, the idea of hereditary right excited a certain degree of 



INTRODUCTION. 1 1 

of Philip Augustus the trium|ph of the hereditary principle in 
succession over the principle of election was assured beyond 
peradventure. 

The second element — the transfer of royal functions to the 
crown — took place simultaneously with the third — that of the 
incorporation of fiefs. As royal feudalism grew, the kings seized 
the chance of annexing lands immediately adjoining the duchy 
of France. As the means of exercising sovereignty increased, the 
territorial extent of sovereignty increased also.' 

The history of feudal France comprises three periods : 

1. The period of dominant feudalism (887-1108) — that of the 
later Carlovingians and early Capetians. 

2. The period of the triumph of the hereditary principle in 
succession to the throne, and that in which feudalism is seri- 
ously impaired by the crown (1108-1314) — from the reign of 
Louis le Gros to the death of Philip the Fair. 

3. The triumph of the absolute monarchy and the evolution 
of the modern state (1314-1483) — from the death of Philip the 
Fair to the death of Louis XL 

It will be expedient, in view of the dissertation before us, to 
glance at the political relations of the states of Europe in the 
twelfth century. " There were certain great bundles of states con- 
nected by a dynastic or by a national unity — the Kingdom of 
France, the Empire of Germany, the Christian States of Spain . . . 
the still solid remnantof the Byzantine Empire, the well-compacted 
dominions of the Normans in Apulia and Sicily. Of these states, 
France, Germany and Spain were busily striving for consolida- 

opposition down to a late day. This testamentary character of the French 
crown is a point that has not been enough emphasized. 

In the encyclical letter of Ivo of Chartres (H. F., XV., 144) announcing 
the coronation of Louis VI. notice is taken of a complaint in Flanders that 
the doctrine of election had been violated. On the dangers incurred by the 
monarchy at the accession of Louis VI. owing to the coalition of the barons in 
favor of a pretender, see Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., p. 82-3, and notes. Orderic 
Vitalis (Book XIII., c. 12) notices the discontent of some of the barons, and 
clergy even, owing to the association of Louis VII. with his father. 

^ Cf. Stubbs, Const. Hist, of England, I., 187, where the opposite process is 
noticed of England. 



1 2 INTROD UCTION. 

tion or against dissolution. . . . Constantinople was far removed 
from the interests of Christendom ; her face set always eastward 
in church and state. The Norman state in Apulia and Sicily was 
the best organized and most united kingdom, and this taken in 
conjunction with the wealth, splendor, ability and maritime 
superiority of the kings, gave it an importance much greater than 
was due to its extent. All the great powers, with the exception 
of the last, had their energies for the most part employed in 
domestic struggles, and were prevented by the interposition of small 
semi-neutral countries from any extensive or critical collision, 
whilst much of their naturally aggressive spirit was carried off to 
the east. Between the Normans and the de facto empire lay the 
debatable and unmanageable estates of the papacy, and the bul- 
wark of Lombardy, itself a task for the whole imperial energies 
of the empire. Between the same empire and France lay the 
remains of the ancient Lotharingian and Burgundian kingdoms, 
from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, hardly even more than 
nominally imperial — a region destined to be the battle ground 
of many generations as soon as the rival nations should have consol- 
idated themselves and girt up their strength. But at present by 
broad intervening barriers and by constant occupation at home, 
now in the humiliation of aspiring vassals, now in the struggle for 
existence against the overwhelming power of the greater feuda- 
tories, now in the maintenance of peace between rivals, the two 
great representatives of the resurrection of European life, the 
Kingdoms of France and Germany were kept at arms' length from 
each other.'" Thus in the twelfth century no two states of 
Europe were in immediate contact or immediate rivalry save 
France and England, an exception which was owing to the acci- 
dent of the Norman Conquest. 

Such is a general view of the political condition of Europe in 
the twelfth century. What of the manner of life of the men of 
that time? Gaul in the early twelfth century was a land divided 
by differences of race not yet amalgamated ; by differences 
of rule, which were the pretext of endless wars ; by grow- 

'Stubbs. The "wonderful preface" to Roger of Hoveden. II. LXX-I. 
(Rolls Series.) 



INTROD UCriON. 1 3 

ing differences of faith even — true forerunners of the Reforma- 
tion. The land was dotted with feudal castles, the abbeys were 
veritable fortresses. Riot and ruin prevailed beyond the pale of 
the castle; the country was sparsely populated. Agriculture was 
nearly impossible save in the narrow circle which the towns might 
protect, or in the breadth of land which some baron of more than 
ordinary power and insight might make secure. It was an iron age, 
when one must be either hammer or anvil. Life was rude and 
full of energy, because its vigorous requirements killed feeble 
organisms. But sometimes these iron men were of fine temper. 
The century that cast up in France such a ruffian as Thomas de 
Marie also brought St. Bernard and Abelard to light. 

In such a time did Louis VI. of France, the first ruler of the 
Capetian house to make the theories of the monarchy active sources 
of power, come to the throne which his father had humiliated and 
dishonored. Public authority was dissolved, law defied, con- 
fusion reigned. The state needed a man of power to arrest dis- 
solution, to restore law and to rebuild public authority. Like 
Edward I. he might be a man of constructive genius ; like Crom- 
well or Cavour, he might believe in some great militant principle; 
he must accept existing conditions and know how to turn them to 
best account. Such a man was Louis VI. of France. He was 
neither theorist nor fanatic. He knew how to build because he 
knew how to select the elements of strength that still survived 
in the midst of the surrounding confusion and use them to the 
best advantage. 

The new Capetian monarchy in spite of its promise and its 
prediction had hitherto failed. The king was supposed to be the 
personification of justice.' As chief of the kingdom he was 
charged with the defense of the realm.^ The peace of the 
church and the protection of the feeble and oppressed were his to 
maintain.^ These duties, with the possible exception of King 
Hugh, no Capetian had yet fulfilled. The crown which Philip 

' Dedecet enim regem transgredi legem, cum et rex et lex eandem imperandi 
excipiant majestatem. — Suger, 50. 
»Brussel, I., 693, 868. 
^Luchaire, Manuel, §§ 250, 460. 



1 4 INTROD UCTION. 

left to his noble son was thus far from being a kingly one. The 
realm was small.' The royal power was lean and emaciated,'' 
and the name king itself sullied and tarnished. 

Louis, owing to the weakness and mismanagement had 
scarcely any tangible basis upon which to rest his authority. In 
the sphere of direct influence he was confined almost entirely^ 
to the Ile-de- France, and even here the barons were accustomed 
to defy the crown and do much as they pleased.* And yet 
through the steady application of an authority at first merely 
nominal, he constructed at last a compacted political organism ^ 

' The duchy of France which was the kernel of the kingdom, was reduced, 
as nearly as can be ascertained, to the Ile-de-France, I'Orleanais, the French 
Vexin, Bourges with the neighboring estates, and the chattelany of Dun-le-Roi. 
(Luchaire, /nsL Afon., II., 298.) But any absolute statement of the extent of the 
realm at this time is impossible, as the crown possessed scattered holdings out- 
side of what has generally been considered the royal domain. " The former 
view that the domain was a compact and circumscribed entity, like the duchy 
of Normandy, has been abandoned in the face of evidence that, beside the two 
hereditary territories of the Capetians, . . . the monarchy possessed various 
scattered holdings in territories outside of what has usually been considered the 
royal domain." — Walker, 118 and note i. Cf. 'Luchaire, /ns(. Mon., I., 8g. 
According to Gaillard, I. 185, the royal domain, ai this time, did not constitute 
one-twentieth of the present France. 

For the territorial expansion of the crown under Philip I. see Luchaire, 
Insf. Mon. II., 246-8. On the purchase of Bourges, see Continuator of Aimon, 
H. F., XI., 157. Philip I. dreamed of real dominion south of the Loire. The 
importance of this acquisition is given by Brussel I., 149, 166, 401. Foulque 
Rechin ceded the Gatinais to Philip I. in order to assure Philip's neutrality in 
his absence. — H. F., XL, 394. 

' But the theory of royal authority still remained and even grew under the 
weaker kings : " Rien ne prouve mieux 1' intensite du courant qui portait alors 
(under Philippe le Hardi) la France vers I'unit^ monarchique, que la force 
croissante de la royaute sous un roi faible." — Langlois, Positions des thhes de 
VEcole des diaries, 1885, p. 96. Published in book form under the title, 
Le Reg7te de Philippe le Hardi, Paris, 1887. 

3 The penetration of the authority of the crown into remote fiefs through 
the right of regale allowed the king a measure of authority not otherwise possi- 
ble. On the regale, in extenso, see Phillips, Ursprung des Regalienrechts in 
Frankreich, Halle, 1870. 

* Suger, passim. 

SMonod, Revue historique, XLIL, 373. 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

over which a genuine sovereignty prevailed. To him the 
royal power was the instrument of justice.' To him the king 
was the incarnate expression of the will of the state — the person- 
ification of its invisible majesty.'' With these lofty conceptions 
of the royal dignity, Louis united the most intense activity. ^ 
He appreciated the finer advantages to be derived from legal and 
institutional changes, as the creation of the right of appeal, and 
the establishment of liege homage testify."* 

Thus he enlisted to his support all forces, new and old, in 
government and society. He so centralized his power in the 
Ile-de-France that his successors henceforth enjoyed its undivided 
resources. It is significant that he added nothing to the territory 
of France until the very last year of his life. The increase of 
royal authority in extension was conditioned on the internal 
strengthening of the regulative power. Louis VI. was content 
to confine his energies within the limits of ancient Neustria. 
His intervention in Bourbonnais and Auvergne, and certain 
dealings in Flanders, Bourgogne and Languedoc are exceptional 
and isolated cases. ^ But within the limits prescribed, there was 
no particular jurisdiction over which he did not exercise an 
influence. The feudal aristocracy, the communes, even the 
church, felt the directive hand of the monarchy. With him 

'Quia fortissima regum dextra offitii jure votivo, tirannorum audacia 
quotiens eos guerris lacessiri vident, infinite gratulantem rapere, pauperes con- 
fundere, ^clesias destruere, interpolata licencia quam si semper liceret, insanius 
inflammantur malignorum instar spirituum, qui quos timent perdere magis 
trucidant, quos sperent retinere omnino fovent, fomenta flammis apponunt ut 
infinite crudelius devorent. — Suger, 80-1. 

"Dedecetenim regem transgredi legem, cum et rex et lex eandem imperandi 
excipiant majestatem. — Suger, 50. 

3 In den ersten Generationen dieses Hauses, vor Erwerbung der Krone, 
finden wir lauter tapfere und emporstrebende Naturen. Nach denen folgten 
andere, die, durch Sinnesweise und Lage friedfertig gestimmt, beinahe einen 
priesterlichen Charakter trugen, ihr Konigthum war mehr eine Wiirde, als eine 
Macht ; jetzt unter veranderten Umstanden gehen Manner aus ihm tiervor, welche 
den Schwung altgemeiner Ideen mit Thatkraft verbinden. — Ranke, Werke, 
VIII., 24. 

■•See this dissertation, pp. 39-43. 

s Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 284. 



1 6 INTROD UCTION. 

began the intensive development of the French monarchy. 
Others had given France the crown. Louis VI. gave the king- 
ship.' Others after him were to give the kingdom. It was 
Louis VI. who made possible that extensive development which 
characterized the reign of Philip Augustus, and the splendor of 
the Capetian House as it shone forth under St. Louis and Philip 
the Fair. 

^ Louis VI. avait donne a la couronne une suprematie feodale reele. Phil- 
lippe Auguste lui procura une force territoriale disproportionnee avec celle des 
grands vassaux. — M. Mignet, Mem. de PAcad. des Sc. mor. et pol., VI., 709. Cf. 
Luchaire, Inst. Man., II., 255. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE WAR OF THE VEXIN. 

Louis, or Louis Thibaud, the sixth of that name to become 
king of France, was born, probably, in the latter part of the year 
io8i ■ His father, Philip L, was deficient in energy and sunk 
in sensual indulgences. These traits of character the son mher 
ited, in less degree, but they never were -«f-d to ,,npa,r he 
energy of his intellect or will. The surname " the Fat (le G,s) 
by which Louis VI. is known in history, is a stigma. Such a t.tle 
was no misnomor with a monarch like Charles the Fat, who was 
lethargic and weak, but it is unjust for history so to designate one 
who in life was known by the far more appropriate sor.inp s of 
"the Wide-Awake" (I'^veme), and "the Warlike" (/. Ba.mlleur). 
His early education was received in the abbey of St. Den.s. where 
he learned to know and appreciate the abilities of his humble 
school-fellow, Suger, afterwards minister of the crown, regent o^ 
France, and the first great finance minister of whom she can 

'""^The period of the life of Louis until the war of the Vexin 
is not characterized by any special mention by the chronicles^ 
He was then sixteen years of age.= The war was ms.gmficant in 
political results.- It brought no practical good to the young 
Louis, save that it gave him training for the larger work of later 
years. The history of the struggle is valuable, however, in that 

:i;t:!:S t:ZT.U. ^rs. .» perceive that .he vulgar idio„ »ight 
be e Jpl yed wi h:llue'i„ the roy.1 chronicles. Xh. fact is not establ.she . but 
S„g.7at east merits a high place in the role °'/'-'\'^'='°":" jTs"- Ts' 
IL. ani LU,ru,ur, in «,e Middl, A,es, English trans., London, .8,8, p. 468. 

:^:fif:tar:hil°- supplies «o ...ar^ahle ins.ances, personal or 
political."— Freeman, Normaft Conquest, V., p. loi. 



t8 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

it shows clearly the weakness of France, the strength of the 
baronage, and gives promise of a national spirit, as yet unappre- 
hended. 

There had been a long-standing quarrel between France and 
Normandy which became of importance only towards the end of 
the Conqueror's reign/ While the general ground of hostility 
was Norman jealousy of the overlord at Paris, the established pre- 
text was the question of supremacy over the French Vexin.^ Nor- 
man historians claimed ^ that Henry of France had ceded the 
strip to Robert of Normandy in return for help of arms given by 
the latter, and that William the Conqueror had failed to claim it 
only on account of wider interests across the channel and in 
Maine/ Border warfare was, therefore, rife and the Conqueror 
at last determined to put a stop to the trouble by a peremptory 
demand for the disputed tract/ The result was the war in which 
he met his death. The conditions of his will brought peace for 
a time by the separation of England and Normandy. But when 
all Normandy fell to Rufus, a dream of continental empire filled 
his mind,® and England was forced again to become a partner in 
the interests at stake between France and the great barrier 

' See Marion, De Normannorum ducum cum Capetianis pacta ruptaque 
societate. Paris, 1892. 

"On the acquisition of the Vexin by Philip I. see Luchaire, Inst. Mon., p. 
247. 

3 0rd. Vit. III., 223. 

^ Ibid. The uncertain feudal relation of the Vexin was further aggravated 
by the conduct of the Count of the Vexin, who held a unique position half way 
between baronage and hierarchy, being alike a vassal and a patron of St. 
Denis, while in his style he pretended perfect independence. — Brussel, I., 542. 

sOrd. Vit. III., 223. 

* Dicebatur equidem vulgo regem ilium superbum et impetuosum aspirare 
ad regnum Francorum. — Suger, p. 7. 

Ord. Vit. IV., 80, is fuller : Maximam jussit classem pr^eparari et ingentem 
equitatum de Anglia secum comitari, ut pelago transfretato, in armis ceu leo 
supra prsedam prsesto consisteret, fratrem ab introitu Neustrias bello abigeret, 
Aquitanise ducatum pluribus argenti massis emeret, et obstantibus sibi bello 
subactis, usque ad Garumnam fluvium imperii sui fines dilataret. 

It is to be remembered that the Aquitaine of those days lay north of the 
Garonne river ; the Aquitaine of which Caesar speaks is southern Aquitaine. 



WAR OF THE VEXIN. 19 

province. By gaining the Vexin Rufus would deprive France 
of frontier protection,' and make way for further encroach- 
ment. 

But the English king had a very different person to deal with 
from the unworthy Philip, who had opposed the conqueror.^ In 
1092 Philip had granted to his son Louis the rule of the Vexin, 
with the towns of Mantes and Pontoise.^ Five years later Rufus 
made his demand of the French king, specifying Mantes, Chau- 
mont and Pontoise,'' and the war began in serious earnest. 

The strength of William lay in the vast sums of money at his 
disposal. The weakness of France lay in the venality and disloy- 
alty of the border barons and in the impoverished condition of the 
monarchy.^ But to this was opposed the amazing energy of 
Louis and the beginning of a French national sentiment. Suger 
justifies his hero by the doctrine that it is not right or natural 
that Frenchmen — he Hoes not say France — be subject to English- 
men, or Englishmen to Frenchmen;^ and even Ordericus Vitalis 
could say of the brave men of the Vexin who fell in this war fight- 

^ Margiis regni collimitans. — Suger, 6. 

^ Louis le Gros was probably associated with his father on the throne in 
HOD or iioi. — Luchaire, Annates, Appendix III. Cf. Acad, des Inscrip., etc., 
IV., 489-508 (1805). Louis, when rex designator, used a seal which indicated 
his martial character. In it he is represented clad in military habit, astride a 
horse, with a lance in his right hand, in his left the reins. Mabillon, p. 594, 
has a description of seal (1107) and on p. 427 is a picture of the seal. On the 
position and influence of the crown prince, see Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 

137-143- 

3 Ludovico filio suo consensu Francorum Pontisariam et Maduntum totumque 
comitatum Vilcassinum donavit, totiusque regni curam, dum primo flore juven- 
tutis pubesceret, commisit. — Ord. Vit. III., 390. 

4 Ord Vit., IV., 20. Suger, 6, states the fact without mentioning the for- 
tresses. According to Palgrave (IV., 626) Rufus asserted a claim through his 
mother Matilda to the Capetian crown, but as usual, he cites no authority for 
the statement. Suger, 7, gives a different claim. 

s Ille (Rufus) opulentus et Anglorum thesaurorum profusus mirabilisque 
militum mercator et solidator ; iste (Louis) deculii expers, patri qui benefitiis 
regni utebatur parcendo, sola bone indolis industria militiam cogebat, audacter 
resistebat. — Suger, 6. 

*Nec fas nee naturale est Francos Anglis, immo Anglos Francis subici. — 
Ibid., 7. 



20 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

ing for their prince-count — Seseque pro defensione patrice. et gloria 
gentis sucB, ad mortem usque itiimicis objecerunt.^ 

Louis had neither men nor money ; while Rufus was able to 
ransom English captives, Louis' prisoners had no hope of deliv- 
erance save in sacrificing honor for liberty and taking oath to 
fight against their natural overlord." To the venality of the bor- 
der baronage William addressed himself directly. The strategic 
situation of the castles of many of these petty lords made their 
allegiance of importance to either side. Of these, Guy-of-the- 
Rock, the lord of La Roche Guyon, was the most notorious.^ 

Count Robert of Meulan, whose fortress was further up the 
Seine, was another who for gold made a straight path for the 
English king into France.'* Louis' energy, for one so young, is 
astonishing. He went far to the south for support. He drew 
on Berry, Burgundy and even Auvergne for knights,^ and at last, 
although he had as often to flee as to fight,^ he brought the Red 
King to a stand. William had dreamed of an Anglican conquest 
of France, but in spite of the aid of so formidable an ally as 

' Ord Vit., IV., 24. 

' Verum Anglie captos redempcionem celerum militaris stipendii accele- 
ravit anxietas, Francorum vero longa diuturni carceris maceravit prolixitas, 
nee ullo modo evinculari potuerunt, donee, suscepta ejusdem regis Anglie militia, 
hominio obligati, regnum et regem impugnare et turbare jurejurando firmave- 
runt. — Suger, 7. 

3Suger describes the rock, chap. xvi. See Freeman's WiUiafn Rufus, II,, 
180-1. 

'' Robertus itaque, comes de Mellento in suis munitionibus Anglos suscepit, 
et patentem eis in Galliam discursum aperuil. — Ord Vit., IV., 21. In all this 
treachery, one baron, whom no price could buy, deserves to be mentioned. 
Helias de St. Sidoine. His castle of Bures on the Dieppe or Arques River was 
an effectual bar to Rufus' scheme of cutting off England and the Gifford barony. 
Rufus at last captured the castle, and so highly did he think of his capture that 
he transported the whole garrison to England. One is glad to know, however, 
that Helias himself escaped. Palgrave, IV., 405. 

s Videres juvenem celerrimum modo Bituricensium, modo Alvernorum, 
modo Burgundiorum militari manu transvolare fines nee ideirco tardius, si ei 
ignotescat, Vilcassinum regredi, et cum trecentis aut quingentis militibus fortis- 
sime refragari, et ut dubius se habet belli eventus, modo cedere, modo fugare. — 
Suger, 6. 

^ Supra. 



WAR OF THE VEXIN. 21 

William of Aquitaine,' he could not wrest away the Vexin. A 
truce was made (1098) which was turned into a real peace by his 
death two years later, and the dream of an Anglican conquest 
slumbered for two centuries.* 

'Ord. Vit., IV., 25. 

^Velly (t. iii., 40) makes this war the beginning of the national rivalry of 
France and England. It began in the end of the year 1097, was waged most 
intensely in September, 1098, and ended with William's return to England in 
1099. — Luchaire, Annales, Introd., xxxvii., ff ; Cf. Nc. 6. 

A full account of the war will be found in Freeman's William Rufus, II., 
171-90. Gaillard, Histoire de la Rivaliti de la France etde VAitgleterre, t. I.,, 
part I., chap. 3. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE LIBERATION OF THE REALM. 

The War of the Vexin Louis fought as Crown Prince. 
Shortly after the peace, by the consent of the barons he was asso- 
ciated Avith his father on the throne.^ In 1108 Philip died and 
Louis at once and without any serious protest^ assumed the full 
direction of the monarchy.^ The problem before him was syn- 
thetic — to unite in the kingship all the scattered elements of sover- 
eignty diffused throughout the feudal state.'* The feudal regime 
had reached its apogee. The monarchy retained hardly more than 
the ascription of authority. ^ The greater portion of the barons 
were not attached to the king by any precise homage or vigorous 
loyalty. The quasi-sovereignty of the dukes and counts formed 
a wall between their vassals and the king, and there was, there- 
fore, no point of contact between the monarchy and seigneurs of 
the second degree.* Even under Philip Augustus the royal right 
to enter a fief not held immediately of the crown was precarious.^ 

^ Luchaire, Annates, No. 8. 

^In the encyclical letter of Ivo of Chartres, H. F., XV., 144, notice is 
taken of a slight discontent. 

3 Luchaire, Annales, No. 57. 

* " L'histoire de France c'est I'histoire de la conquete de la France par la 
royaute, la substitution de I'unite a la variete f^odale, de la centralisation a f^d^ra- 
tion." — M. Gabriel Monod, Revue hist., Sept.-Oct. 1893, p. loi. 

5 Luchaire, Manuel, 243. 

^ Inst. Mon., II., 29. On the general subject see Ibid. II., 21-36. 

7 Luchaire, Manuel, 257; Walker, 109. In the first article of the joint 
constitution (1209 or 1210) between Philip Augustus and the grand barons of 
the realm the difference between direct and rear vassals is clearly given : — Quic- 
quid tenetur de domino ligie, vel alio modo, si contigerit per successionem 
heredum vel quocunque alio modo divisionem inde fieri, quocunque modo fiat, 
omnes qui de feodo illo tenebunt, de domino feodo principaliter et nulla tnodo 
tenebunt, sicut unus antea tenebat priusquam divisio esset facta. — (Brussel, I., 

22 



LIBERATION OF THE REALM. 23 

The relation of the great lords to their vassals was almost simi- 
lar in kind to that which the barons themselves sustained towards 
the king. Even fiefs of the church enjoyed such high authority. 
The political power of certain ecclesiastical dignitaries exceeded 
even their spiritual authority, as in the case of Stephen de 
Garland.' 

The social and economic condition was as bad as the political. 
In order that he might save expense, many a baron neglected to 
repair the roads which sank into quagmires ; river channels would 
become obstructed by sand-bars ; bridges be swept away and not 
rebuilt. The barriers which feudal usurpations opposed to com- 
merce were interminable. The number and kind of exactions 
were very many. Each petty baron demanded toll for the use of 
road, bridge, or ferry, while strangers were regarded as legitimate 
objects of extortion.'^ Often the guard of protection was a band 
of brigands. The seigneur found it a lucrative practice to plun- 
der merchants and wayfarers. Gregory VII. had accused Philip 
I. of despoiling Italian merchants who resorted to the fairs in 
France.^ 

This was the sort of men control of whom was laid upon the 
shoulders of the young king. No wonder he was in continual 
war."* The territory of the enemy began a few miles from Paris ; 

15). The grand fiefs were duchies and counties; after them came chatellanies 
{Ibid., I., iTi)- A viscounty and a chatellany were one and the same thing 
{Ibid., II., 676-7). Many hereditary viscounties in the twelfth century consisted 
of a chdteau or fortified ville with a considerable domain, together with the serfs 
and appurtenances upon it. On this process of feudalization see Brussel, I., 44, ff. 

' See this dissertation, pp. 48 ff. The bishops of Laon, Chalons and Beau- 
vais were also great lay lords. Pfister, Le Rhgne de Robert le Pieux, 184. 

* " Ces impots, qui nous paraissent si etranges par leur multiplicity et par 
leur noms que nous ne comprenons plus, dtaient au fond aussi legitimes et 
aussi conformes a toute I'organisation sociale que nos impots actuels. La 
fdodalitd etait une gendarmerie." — Pigeonneau, I., 99. 

sEpistolae, September 1074, to the French clergy; and to William of Poi- 
tiers, November 1076. — H. F., XIV., 583, 587. See the canons of the councils 
of Clermont (1130), Rheims (1131), etc. Praecipimus ut . . . . peregrini et 
mercatores et rustici euntes et redeuntes .... omni tempore securi sunt. — 
Canon of Clermont, 8. 

4 In marte continue — Suger, 35. 



24 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

the king could not go from his capital to Orleans or Compiegne 
without a band of men-at-arms.' The moral advantage of royalty, 
though not so slight as sometimes supposed/ had little influence 
over a horde of lusty barons who fattened on war and had 
nothing to gain from peace j^ whose delight was to exercise "the 
sovereign rights of slaughter and havoc ;" to whom glory was 
physical prowess ; the baseness of whose life was relieved only by 
the faint demands of chivalry/ 

Louis, however, was not without some advantages in the 
struggle. The age in which he lived was not unfavorable for a 
man who knew how to make the most of what it afforded. The 
eleventh century had closed with the first crusade and the con- 
quest of the Holy Land. The twelfth century began with Abe- 
lard and the communal movement — the two liberties essential 
to constitutional life — liberty of the spirit and civil liberty .^ 
With that pious crusading enthusiasm which led men to sell 
their own lands in order to see others, Louis had little sympathy, 
but he was quick enough to see the good results likely to accrue 
to the throne from the absence of turbulent vassals in the East.' 
Two classes, the bourgeoisie and the lower clergy, whose spirit of 
subordination resulting from the hierarchical organization, had 
made them, on the whole, favorable to authority, were equally 
devoted to the king.^ In fact the church generally was faithful 

' Cumque a fluvio Sequano Corbeilo, medio vie Monte Leherii, a dextra 
Castella Forti pagus Parisiacus circumcingentur, inter Parisienses et Aurelianses 
tantum confusionis chaos firmatum erat, ut neque hi ad illos neque illi ad istos 
absque perfidorum arbitrio nisi in manu forti valerent transmeare. — Suger, 19. 

'Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 54. 

3 Pace nihil luctrantes. — Suger, 80. 

4 Freeman, William Rufus, II., Appendix I. The conduct of Henry I. of 
England towards Louis VI. in the battle of Bremule illustrates the prevalence 
of chivalric ideas. — Suger, 91-2. 

SQebhart, Les Origines de en Renaissance en Italie, Paris, 1878, p. 28. 

*The notorious Hugh de Puiset went to the Holy Land (1128) and thus 
rid France of one of the most despicable and dangerous of cut-throats. He 
founded the dynasty of the Counts of Jaffa. — Suger, 79, n. 5. Gui Trous- 
sel and the Count of Rochefort were in the First Crusade. — Ibid.., 18, 19 and 
n. 4. 

7 Combes, 132. 



LIBERATION OF THE REALM. 25 

to the interests of monarchy. The Truce of God promulgated at 
the council of Clermont (1095) had been an effort to regulate the 
disordered condition of affairs.' The church which had retained 
the most unity in the prevailing dismemberment of political 
society had sought to remedy the evils of robbery, plunder, ship- 
wrecking' and private war,^ not as formerly, by hurling anathe- 
mas, but by virtually instituting home crusades on the part of 
the clergy. The property of the church repleted the insufficient 
revenues of the king ; the church supplied the emasculated mon- 
archy with men.'* 

The imminence of the danger from the violence of the barons 
had produced a salutary bestirring in royal circles towards the 
end of Philip's reign. We are not to think that Philip was as 
incapable as is commonly supposed.^ He was inert ; still he had, 
at least, the merit of feeling the need of restoring the monarchy 
to power and of appreciating the valuable abilities of his son, to 
whom the credit of this movement was largely due. The will to 
accomplish his purpose, however, the father lacked. 

The field of Louis' action was in the main confined to the 
spaces between the five cities of Paris, Orleans, Etampes, Melun 
and Compiegne;* all the intermediate territory was occupied by 

'See Ivo of Chartres, epist. 90 (H. F., XV., no) for an elucidation of the 
character and scope of the Truce of God. The oath is given in Rod. Glab., 
IV., c. 5, V. c. I. The restrictions largely failed of their purpose owing to 
being too stringent for the times (DuCange, Treva). 

= This was prohibited by Philip Augustus. — Walker, 103. 

3 For the efforts of the Carlovingians to regulate private war, see Beth- 
mann-Hollweg, Civilprozess, I., 464-5- For its prevalence in the eleventh 
and twelfth centuries, see Mon. Germ. Hist. Scriptores, XV., 839, 858, 879, 
1 146, and DuCange. Dissert., XXIX.— M. Rambaud {Civilisation franfaise, 
5th edit., 1893, Vol. I., p. 224), says that Louis IX., in establishing the 
Quarantaine-le-roi, simply revived an ordinance of Louis VI. 

4 Ludovicus. . . . auxilium per Galliam deposcere coactus est episcoporum. 
Tune ergo communitas in Francia popularis statuta est a praesulibus, ut 
presbyteri comitarentur regi ad obsidionem vel pugnam cum vexillis et 
parochianis omnibus.— Ord. Vit., IV., 285, Suger, 65, says — cum communitates 
patriae parochiorum adessent. 

SLuchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 241. 
^Sismondi, v., 86. 



26 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

barons who, fortified in their ^/^^/(?az^^, made "a thievish living 
on the common road." The danger from the barons was so 
great that even upon the death of Philip I. Louis VI. had him- 
self crowned at Orleans by the archbishop of Sens instead of at 
Rheims, the usual place of coronation.' The conflict was fierce 
and unremitting, and Louis displayed prodigious courage. He 
was always in the forefront urging his men by word and deed. 
In the siege of the Chateau de Mouchi his ardor carried him into 
the keep, although the castle was a mass of flames. He escaped, 
but lost the use of his voice for months to come.* In the 
autumn of 1107, in the campaign against Humbaud of Sainte- 
Severe-sur-Indre, when the king's men had to cross that river 
in the face of the foe, Louis set an example by leaping into the 
water and fording the stream, although it was up to the barred 
front of his helmet.^ 

It would be profitless to give a detailed account of these cam- 
paigns / but certain salient features are to be observed: 

First, every fortress taken was leveled, or else entrusted to 
parties of assured fidelity. ^ 

Second, some castles were too strong to be taken by arms, 
but the possession of them was of vital importance to Louis' 

' Si consecratio regis differetur, writes Ives de Chartres, regni status et 
ecclesiae pax graviter periclitaretur. (H. F., XV., 144. Cf. Suger, 39-41.) 
Moreover, the archbishop of Rheims had just been elected and liad not yet 
talcen his seat. Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 70, and note 3. Cf. Lucliaire, Inst. 
Moil., I., 82-3. 

^Tanta viri erat animositas, ut nee incendium declinare curaret cum et ei 
et exercitui periculosum esset et raulto tempore maximam ei raucitatem gene- 
raret. — Suger, 10. 

3 See the spirited account in Suger, c. xi» On this expedition into Bour- 
bonnais see M. Brial's analytical memoir in the Acad, des Inscript., VI. (1824), 
pp. 129-137. 

4 Sixteen are recorded b}^ Suger alone. 

s Louis VI. was the first to forbid the erection of fortresses in the Ile-de. 
France without the consent of the l<.ing. — Brussel, I., 381. He constructed walls 
in the vicinity of Paris, erected fortresses and placed towers upon the bridges to 
facilitate the defense of the city. — Dulaure, Hist, de Paris. Paris, 1829 (fourth 
edition). Vol. II., p. 46. See the Noiitia de Cottstructione castri A'aroli-Vanae, 
H. F., XIV., 221, Luchaire, Annales, No. 324. 



LIBERATION OF THE REALM. 27 

scheme of consolidation. There were two of these, whose loca- 
tion was such as to make their occupation by the king imperative. 
They were the Chateau of Montlhery, and that of La Roche 
Guyon.' They were impregnable, and a constant menace. The 
first was situated, in the striking words of Suger, in the very 
vitals of the kingdom.^ So essential^ was the adherence of its 
lord that King Philip (we may believe at the instance of Louis,) 
offered his natural son Philip in marriage to Guy's" daughter 
Elizabeth, who brought with her Montlhery as dowry. Louis, 
on his part, ceded to his half-brother the castle of Mantes as a 
mark of confidence. But Philip repaid the confidence by 
intriguing with Amauri IV. de Montfort, Foulque V. the Young 
of Anjou,s and the mother of Philip, Bertrade, the king's 
mistress and late Countess of Anjou.* In order to secure La 
Roche Guyon Louis himself espoused Lucienne, the daughter of 
Guy of the Rock.^ 

Third, Louis gave active support to the great prelates of the 
realm. In 1102 or 1103 he succored the church of Rheims, 
harried by Ebles II., Count de Roucy,^ and the year afterwards 
petition came for help from the sanctuary of Orleans.^ Nothing 
could more plainly evince the boldness of the barons. The 

'La Roche Guyon is described in Freeman's William Rufus, II., 180-I. 

= In ipsis regni visceribus. — Suger, 57. 

3Valde enim appetebant castrum. Ibid., 18. 

■♦Qua occasione castri custodie sue recepto, tamquam si oculo suo festucam 
eruissent aut circumsepti repagula dirupissent, exhilarescunt. — Ibid. Gu^ 
Troussel was a son of Milon I. of Montlhery. — Suger, 18, n. i. 

5 Suger, 57. 

*For the machinations of Bertrade, see Ord. Vit., IV., 195 ff., and Free- 
man's William Rufus, II., 173-4. 

7 This marriage was dissolved at the Council of Troyes in 1107. Luchaire, 
Inst. Mon., I., 182, attributes the rupture with the family of Rochefort to the 
plottings of the Garlands. (Cf. Suger, 19, n. 5). The Count of Rochefort was 
seneschal in 1091, and was replaced by Payen de Garland at the time of the 
First Crusade. On Guy's return from the Holy Land (about 1104) he was rein- 
stalled in the office. But the ascendancy of the Garlands acquired during his 
absence, created jealousy and finally open rupture between him and the king. 
{Ibid., 18, n. 4.) 

^ Suger, 14. 

^ Ibid., IS- 



28 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

archbishop of Rheims was grand chancellor of the realm,' while 
the church of Orleans had been for generations under the special 
protection of the crown, and, next to Rheims, was the most noted 
cathedral west of the Rhine. 

Fourth, as Louis' power grew, the sphere of application 
enlarged. The barons were to learn, as Suger aptly said, that 
"kings have long arms.'"' In 1115, Alard Guillebaud, of Berry, 
solicited the king's help in recovering the seigneury usurped by 
his uncle, Aimond Vairevache, of Bourbon.^ Louis lost no time. 
The way to the south was open. Not since the days of Robert the 
Pious had a French monarch been so far from his capital.'' But 
a grander opportunity for the extension of royal power to the 
south was at hand. The bishop of Clermont had complained of 
the Count of Auvergne in 1121 (P).^ Five years later another 
expedition was necessary.* But the count was a vassal of the 
great duke of Aquitaine,'' the most powerful lord in the south. 
Interference by the king with a rear vassal was a thing hitherto 
unheard of in feudal law. But the king was strong. He had 
with him Charles the Good of Flanders, Foulque of Anjou, and 
the Count of Brittany, besides many barons of the realm.® Thus 
surrounded by what was in fact his curia regis, Louis entered 

'Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 188 ; Mabillon, 113. 

^ Suger, 83, quoting Ovid, Heroides, XVII., 166. Scitur enim longas 
regibus esse manus. 

'^ Ibid., c. xxiv. This was between 1 108-15. See Luchaire, Annales, 
Nos. 91-2. Acad, des Inscrip., etc., VII., 129(1806). Cf. Guizot, IV., 120-2. 

4 Pfister, Le Regne de Robert le Pieux, 286, 294. 

In 1 134 Louis VI. granted to Humbert, bishop of Puy-en-Velay, the exer- 
cise of regalian rights in the absence of his lord, the Count of Tripoli, in Syria. 
Luchaire, Annales, 532. According to Sismondi (V. 255) this is the first appear- 
ance of royal authority so far south in one hundred and twenty-four years. 

5 Suger, 108 and n. i. 

'^On the dates of these expeditions, see Suger, 108, nn. i, 3, 4, and Luchaire 
Annales No. 369. 

7 Suger, 109. 

^Erant in ejus expedicione, comes prepotens Flanderensis Karolus, comes 
Andegavensis Fulco, comes Brittanie, tributarius regis anglici Henrici de Nor- 
mannia exercitus, barones et regni optimates. — Ibid., 108. 



LIBERATION OF THE REALM. 29 

Auvergne, gave judgment and made execution/ The Count of 
Auvergne called upon his suzerain. Duke William came with 
his army, but when he saw the host of the king he was filled with 
fear and admiration. He did homage to Louis VI., and acknowl- 
edged the royal right to take cognizance of the indirect vassals 
of the crown."" Arriere-ban had been delivered a telling blow. 
The precedent was not forgotten, although it took years of patient 
persistence for the crown entirely to establish the new right. ^ 
Finally, it is to be noticed that the history of these wars has 
an intimate connection with the curia regis, and therefore has a 
direct relation to the general history of France and the progress 
of royal power. The king had a triple mission ; he was legis- 
lator, judge and sheriff, all in one."* The administration of jus- 
tice was in a sorry state when Louis, as prince, assumed active 
direction.^ These campaigns were in reality executions of judg- 
ments,* often by default. They were preceded by a court pro- 

'Rex cum optimatibus regni consulens. — Ibid., no. At the end of the 
reign of Philip the charters distinguished between ordinary counsellors {ctiri- 
ales) and the greater feudal advisers (fideles or optimates). It is stretching the 
text, however, to see in this allusion of Suger the peers of later Fiance. — Suger, 
no, n. I. What we have is the curia regis, still as an ambulatory body. See 
this dissertation p. 41-2. 

= Suger, 1 09-1 10. The speech of Duke William is very significant : "Dux 
tuus Aquitanie, domine rex, multa te salute, onini te potui honore. Non dedig- 
netur regie majestatis celsitudo ducis Aquitanie servitium suscipere, jus suum ei 
conservare, quia sicut justicia exigit servitium, sic et justum exigit dominium. 
Arvernensis comes, quia Alvernian a me, quam ego a vobis habeo, si quid com- 
misit curie vestre vestro habeo imperio representare. Hoc nunquam prohibui- 
mus, hoc etiam modo offerimus et ut suscipiatis suppliciter efflagitamus. Et ne 
super his celsitudo vestra dubitare dignetur, multos sufficientes obsides dare 
paratos habemus. Si sic indicaverint regni optimates, fiat, sin aliter, sicut." 

3 This fellowship is the beginning of the friendly relations of France and 
Aquitaine, which culminated in the union of Louis the Young and Eleanor. 
Louis VII. sustained the right of intervention in Auvergne. Hist, du Roi 
Louis VIL, c. xxii. ; Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 293. 

4Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., vii. Pardessus, 25-6. 

5 Ludovicus itaque .... illuster et anim9sus regni paterni defensor eccle- 
siarum utilitatibus providebat ; oratorum (aratorum?), laboratorum et pauperum 
quod diu insolitum fuerat, quieti studebat. — Suger, 9. 

^Brussel, I., 326. 



30 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

cess, although such process was little more than a matter of form 
in the case of such bandits as Thomas de Marie' and Hugh of 
Puiset.^ It was a maxim of feudal law that no arrest could take 
place in the court itself.^ However great the annoyances were in 
his long struggle with the feudality, Louis had always an instinc- 
tive reverence for law/ He respected the rules of feudal law — 
what Suger styles the " custom of the French " ^ or the " Salic law." * 
The principle and interests of the monarchy demanded a legal 
basis to operate upon. Louis made his judgments hard because 
he believed that if the king were lightly thought of in a case of 
little moment there would be no hope of justice in those involv- 
ing large interests.' To that end he was always on the alert, 
summoning or executing in person or by agent, hearing causes of 
immediate instance as well as of appeal^ and reversing lower 
decrees, if necessary.^ 

This consideration leads to an inquiry into the judicial sys- 
tem of the Capetian monarchy. 

^ For Thomas de Marie and his brigandages consult Guibert de Nogent, 
III., c. xi. 

^For those of Hugh de Puiset, see Suger, cc. xviii., xxi. 
3Non tentus, neque enim Francorum mos est. — Suger, 9. ■ 

4 See this dissertation, introd. p. 9. 

5 Francorum mos est, etc. — Suger, 9. 

^ Ibid., 37. Suger uses some queer expressions to define feudal relations. 
Thus (p. 35) Theobald is "non eminus sed comminus." The author of the 
Chroniques de Saint Denis, III., 245, interprets this thus : " Eut le sire du rfegne 
fait mander son arriere-ban et les gens voisines semonses, car il n'eut pas loisir 
de mander loing souldoiers." — Suger, 35, n. 3. Again (p. 107) Suger speaks 
of Foulque of Anjou, Conan of Brittany and the Counts of Nevers and Berry 
as "regni debitores," meaning grand vassals. He is in error regarding the 
last two. 

7 Louis VI. writes to Calixtus II., Rex ergo Franciae, qui pi-oprius est 
Romanas ecclesise filius, si in facili causa, si in levi petitione contemnitur, nulla 
spes in majori relinquitur. — H. F. XV., 340. 

®On appeal see this dissertation, pp. 39-41. 

9 He sends word to Thierry of Flanders (1132) to look after the bishop of 
Arras, Alvisus, whom Eustace de la Longue had wronged by a false decree, — 
contra justitiam et rationem in curia sua. H. F., XV., 342-3. See Luchaire, 
Inst. Man., I., 300-1. Langlois, Texies relatifs a IHistoire du Parlementt 
No. VII. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE COURT OF THE KING AND ITS JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS 
UNDER LOUIS VI.' 

ORGANIZATION EXTENSION OF ITS COMPETENCE CHANGES IN 

FEUDAL LAW. 

The highest court of justice was a bench composed of the 
princes of the blood, the grand vassals of the crown, seigneurs 
holding immediately of the king, archbishops, bishops and the 
officers of the king's palace." It was commonly called the curia 
regis? The participation of the vassals was more or less com- 
plete according to circumstances.'* The ordinance therein made 
with the consent of the baronage, was less an act of the express 
will of the suzerain than a political agreement. It was sanctioned 
by a greater or less number of vassals, as the case was, and 
was executory throughout the extent of the realm. ^ As far as 
they contributed to the making of the law, the signing barons 
engaged for and against all, to put it into execution. They were 

' See Luchaire, La Cour du Roi et ses fonctions judiciaires sous le regne de 
Louis VI. 

' Cf. H. F., X., 627, XL 407. 

3 Comes quidam malefactor, nomine Rodolphus, qui res ecclesige per 
injustam occasionem invaserat . . . appelatus fuit in Curia Regis. — Letter of 
Fulbert of Chartres to John XIX., H. F., X., 473. 

The common expressions employed to denote the royal assembly are cttria 
regis, conventus, concilium and colloquium. Sometimes, when of an ecclesi- 
astical phase, the terms synodus ox placituju are employed. In general, the con- 
vention was composed of the most prominent feudal and church repi-esentatives: 
Xht principes, the. primates and the firoceres regis, i. e., the bishops and nobles 
(episcopi et optifiiates, episcopi et barones). — Luchaire, Manuel, 494. 

'* Pardessus, 29. 

5 Practically, the application of the law was much less than this. Even in 
the time of Philip Augustus these agreements "were no further binding than the 
personal territories of the contracting parties extended." — Walker, 68. 

31 



32 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

supposed to advise those vassals who were not present, and con- 
strain those who did not wish to conform to the decree/ In fact, 
it was sometimes specified that the signers had taken oath to 
enforce observation of the law upon all who essayed to infringe 
it.* The competence of the court was thus very largely measured 
by the competence of the lords and councilors around the person 
of the king.^ The ecclesiastical seigneurs, being more dependent 
upon royalty, came more often and in greater numbers than the 
laity, and exercised a considerable influence over affairs pertain- 
ing to the baronage. The reciprocal relation existing between 
the throne and the clergy, and the double power, feudal and 
ecclesiastical, of the latter, explains the importance of the clergy 
to the royal, government." The church possessed the degree of 
instruction necessary to settle the difficulties over which the court 
of the king had jurisdiction.^ The ecclesiastics of Sens and 
Rheims, in whose jurisdiction lay the greater part of the lands 
immediately under royal authority, appear most frequently in the 
royal assembly.* Among lay lords are first those not far removed 
from Paris, the small barons of Parisis, Vexin, Etampes, 
L'Orleanais, Beauvaisais, etc.; among high feudatories come the 
counts of Flanders, Ponthieu, Vermandois, Champagne, Nevers 
and Blois.' As for the more distant feudal chiefs, their presence 
depended on the most diverse circumstances : geographical 
situation, or the more or less amicable relations with the crown 
being the principal determinants. Before the twelfth century, 
the dukes of Normandy, Aquitaine and Burgundy, and the 
counts of Brittany, Anjou and Auvergne were present more 

' Pardessus, 32. 

' Luchaire, Manuel, 251-2. 

^Ibid., 557. 

*■ Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 294. 

s Luchaire, Manuel, 494. 

* Luchaire, Manuel, 495. 

7 It will be observed that the distinction which prevailed by the time of 
Philip Augustus, between the regium concilium and the cw-ia regis cannot be 
ascertained at this time. See Luchaire, Z« Cour du Roi et ses fonctions judici- 
aires sous le rigne de Louis VL, pp. 24-5. Cf. Froidevaux, De regiis conciliis 
Philippo II,, Augusto regnante, habitis. Paris, 1891. 



THE COURT AND ITS JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS. 33 

frequently than in the reign of Louis VI., when royalty- was 
isolating itself in order to fortify and concentrate its powers. ' 

The court in the time of Louis VL had cognizance of civil and 
criminal matters,^ cases involving the communes,^ appeals for 
redress or protection, and even such trivial things as a squabble 
between monks of rival monasteries.* The way in which Louis 

' There is a distinction made in the feudal law of the tenth and eleventh 
centuries between the right of justice of the king as suzerain, and the right of 
justice of the king as prince of those who owe him fealty. In the latter case, the 
king sits less as a feudal lord than as a prince clothed with sovereignty, 
although the distinction lost its practical importance owing to the conduct of 
the kings. The curia regis originally comprised all fideles whom the king 
chose to summon. According to custom, unless it were a cause involving an 
ecclesiastical seigneur or a superior baron, one who was, therefore, not ame- 
nable to the judgment of simple vassals, the case was tried before the court of 
justice made up of ordinary vassals, i. e., contests between vassals properly so- 
called were decided by a feudal court where they alone sat, which was merely 
an incorporation in the feudal regime of a principle which far antedated the 
existence of a feudal polity. But the fact that the king was also Duke of 
Francia made it possible for him to bring to bear a degree of authority upon the 
fideles which, while technically legal, tended to eliminate any action of theirs 
calculated to dominate in the curia regis. The vassals of the duke were neces- 
sarily also direct vassals of the king. The king caused the affairs even oi fideles 
to be judged through the court of his own vassals, a method of procedure as 
effective as it was legitimate ; for it was to royal advantage so to do, inasmuch 
as the constituency of the court was composed of the men who lived in his 
immediate neighborhood, and who were more likely to be under his control, as 
the grand officers of the crown, the seneschal, butler, chamberlain, constable 
and chancellor. The result was that by the twelfth century the cu7'ia regis had 
become, in principle, royal rather than feudal. The curia regis thus became 
technically a court of peers without being so in fact; a court whose competence 
no one could deny, but which was in fact a mixed court, which aided the king 
to transform his feudal suzerainty into sovereignty and rendered his sovereignty 
effective under the guise of a feudal suzerainty. See on this head, Flach, I., 
livre II., ch. viii., especially pp. 244-254 ; Heeren, Pol. Werke, II., 166 ff. 

'^Galbert de Bruges, c. 47. 

3 Langlois, Textes relatifs a Vllist. du Parlement, No. VIII. Luchaire, 
Manuel, 557, c. On the capacity, in general, of the court, see Luchaire, Inst. 
Mon., I., 289, ff. 

*H. F., XIV., 156. The king released the monasteries from the jurisdic- 
tion of intermediate judges, allowing cases to come directly before him. — 
Brussel, I., 507. 



34 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

insisted upon the competence of the royal court over the clergy- 
was dignified and steadfast. Fortunately his two ministers, 
Stephen de Garland, and after him Suger, churchmen though 
they were, were in perfect accord with the king in maintaining 
the dependence of the clergy upon the royal authority.' The 
court was also, on occasion, a national parliament, as when the 
Emperor Henry V. threatened France. It then enjoyed a truly 
political character.^ 

The fluid composition of the court in the eleventh, and even 
in the early twelfth century, is discernible in its lack of specific 
organization. Its procedure was feudal,^ with frequent recourse 
to trial by battle. Acts of general interest are rare. Legislation 
is accompanied by the use of grandiloquent phrases, as edictum 
regulis imperii, signum serenissimi ac gloriossismi regis, auctori- 
tatis nostrae praecepturn, and the like.'' The acts are disfigured 
with interminable preambles, and encumbered with numerous 
signatures. Under Louis le Gros, however, they become more 
formal and simple. Instead of the inscriptions of a motley array 
of court retainers, nobles, chaplains, physicians, tutors and even 
cooks and scullions, who all took a hand in the business under 

' See the complaint of Hildebert, archbishop of Tours (1126), writing prob- 
ably to the papal legate. H. F., XV., 319. Louis VI. would not let decrees of 
an ecclesiastical tribunal be valid till sanctioned by him. "Dehinc audita 
utriusque partis causa, cum ego adhuc debitum expectarem judicium. Rex mihi 
per se ipsum prohibuit ne quidquam de praedictarum redditibus dignitatum aut 
praesumerem aut ordinarem." Cf. Letter of Honorius II,, Ibid,, XV., 321. 
Acquisition or alienation of fiefs by the church he made conditional on royal 
consent. — "Non enim licet episcopo feodum'aliquod sine nostro et capituli sui 
assensu de rebus ecclesiae alicui prebere : quod profecto judicium et approbamus 
et ubique in regno nostro ergo ecclesiae tenemus" (1132). — Langlois, Textes 
relatifs a V Histoire du Parlement, No. VII. Consult Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 
282-8 ; 294-300. See also the elaborate case of the partition of the rights of 
the banlieue with the Archbishop of Paris, Luchaire, Annales, No. 218 
Luchaire, La Cour du Roi et ses fonctions judiciaires son ' '<? rigne de Louis VI., 
pp. 17-18. Guerard, Cartul de Notre-Datne de Paris, I., 252. The act itself is 
in Tardif, No. 345. 

' Suger, 103. Luchaire, Inst. Man., I., 267-8. 

3 Luchaire, Manuel, 558. 

^Mabillon, no. 



THE COURT AND ITS JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS. 35 

the early.kings, we find now such promiscuous attention to the 
work of the curia regis increasingly rare.; and sometimes only 
the signatures of the seneschal, butler, chamberlain, constable 
and chancellor/ A refreshing revival of ancient forms is also 
noticeable, borrowed from the old Prankish chancery.* More 
care is taken in chronology,^ and the seal is more carefully 
affixed/ Refusals to obey court summons also cease almost 
entirely. The refractory barons protest and procrastinate, and 
with one accord make excuses, but seldom refuse obedience to 
the summons.^ 

The revival of the Carlovingian chancery suggests another 
reform made by Louis le Gros, partaking somewhat of Carlo- 
vingian forms. Even towards the end of the eleventh century 
may be discerned that contraction in the constituency of the 
curia regis which gave rise to the institution of the palatins, an 
administrative body of preponderant authority in the next cen- 
tury.* This change is a sure sign of centralization. Gradually 
the king, about whose person the palatins habitually gathered, 
came to entrust to them, as the exigency arose, duties of an 
administrative nature, judicial inquiries, or diplomatic errands.^ 

'In the session of the court under Philip I. (1066) an act is signed by 
twenty-four persons (Langlois, Textes relatifs a V Histoire du Parle77ient, No. 
IV.). A decree by Louis VI. (1112) is signed by twelve {I6id., No. Yl.). In 
1 136 only the chancellor and the four great officers attest {Ibid., No. VIII.). Cf. 
Luchaire, hist. Mon., I. 169, note. 

2 See Sugar, 80, and n. 5; H. F., XV., 342; Luchaire, Annales, No. 489 
Langlois, Textes relatifs a V Histoire du Parlement, No. VII. The charter to 
Notre-Dame de Paris (Tardif, No. 377), in 11 19, is a copy, word for word, of a 
similar act by Louis le Debonnaire. (Tardif, No. 104) It even enumerates 
Carlovingian imposts. For other cases see Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 213, and 
n. 2 ; 244. Revue Hist., XXXVII. (1888), Luchaire, Louis le Gros et son 
Palatins, p. 267. 

sMabillon, 204. 

^ Ibid., 426. 

s Revue Hist., XLII. (1890), p. 84. Langlois, Les Origines du Parlement de 
Paris. 

^Luchaire, Manuel, 534. On the palatins, see 'Lxxch.'ahQ, Inst. Mon., I., 
199-204; Brussel, I., 370-6. 

7 Les noms qui se trouvent au pied de la plupart des arrets rendus par la 
cour capetienne — noms des personages qui ont conseille au roi sa decision, 



36 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

Louis conceived the idea of using these trustworthy men as spe- 
cial representatives of the royal person in judicial proceedings. 
The abuse of power by the local prevots was very great,' and he 
thought to remedy the evils of administration by making these 
occasional missions a prominent feature of his government. 
President Renault^ has claimed that Louis VI. actually revived 
the missi doniinici. But these officers had not the extensive juris- 
diction of the Carlovingian missi; rather they were royal prev6ts 
endowed with special powers ; ^ but they were never in his time 
a distinct order of the administration. Louis VI. did not revive 

apres avoir entendu la cause, prouvent que quelques palatins se sont fait de 
bonne heure une specialite des affaires judiciaires. Langlois, Revue Hist., 
XLII., 1890, p. 79. Les Origines du Parlement de Paris. Cf. Glasson, V., 
402. 

''Brussel, I., 394. 

^Renault, I., 196; also Gaillard, I., 186. 

3 Mais a la fin du douzieme sifecle, quand I'autorite royale, d'abord faible et 
sans action, eut pris un essor remarquable, sous Louis VI. et sous son fils, par les 
soins de Suger, quand dominant les tyrannes locales et parvenant a se faire la 
protectrice des faibles, a moderer les querelles des seigneurs puissants, elle fut 
devenue, comme I'a dit M. Guizot, "une sorte de justice de paix universelle," 
elle sentit que pour s'exercer utilement elle devait avoir pour representants des 
agents plus considerables que les prdvots. Vuitry, I., 157. Cf. Brussel, I., 
507-8. Such a case is cited by Mabillon, 600, Charter, No. 180(1135). Notitia 
judicati pro moriasterio majori sancti Crispini Suessionensi de feodo BiHisiaci : 
Ego Teulfus, abbas .... notum fieri volo .... quod quidam vir Suessione- 
sis, Aloldus nomine, habebat quosdam reditus apud villam, quae dicitur Bisti- 
sisacus, scilicet vinatica, hospites, terragia quae se dicebat in feodo tenere ab 
ipsa ecclesia. Cumque ab antiqui monachis ecclesiaeque familis diligenter 
requississem quid super hoc sentirent ; jurejurando mihi retulerunt, ilium non 
vera proferre ; quin potius per subreptionem non ex recto et jure, ab ecclesia 
extorsisse. Hie ergo veridica relatione compertis, Aloldum in praesentiam 
nostri quam saepius arcessiri volui ; quem minis blanditiisque pulsabam, ut 
haec omnia quae ab ecclesia injuste et per violentiam abstulerat, Sanctis resti- 
tueret, ne excommunicationi subjaceret. Quod cum nee plene refutans, nee 
omnino assentiens, in dies agere differret, ita me suspensum reddebat .... 
Indixi itaque illi diem placiti in curia nostra; protestans me^^facere quid unde 
judicaret lex causidica vel ecclesiastica. Venit ergo ad praefixum diem, fretus 
amicorum et jurisperitorum maxima caterva. Quod ego praenoscens, missa ad 
gloriosissimum Francorum regem Ludovicum epistola, exordine patefeci omnia. 
Qui ex lateri suo Hugonem, agnomento Acharin, praeposituni regium misit, 
imperans, ut causam ecclesiae defineret justo judicio. 



THE COURT AND ITS JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS. 37 

the ancient Carlovingian order ; the humbler work was his to 
break the way for the greater and permanent institution of the 
reign of Philip Augustus, that of the grand bailiffs.'' 

An attempt by Louis VI. to modify the judicial duel was 
measurably successful. He could not hope to abolish it, for the 
feature was too organic a portion of existing law.^ Even St. 
Louis was able to enforce a decree against trial by battle in the 
area of his immediate realm only.^ However, from the reign of 
Louis le Gros the prevalence of duelling begins to decline, 
and written evidence has increasing weight. "* If he could 
not level down, Louis VI. could level up — he could open 
the lists to those hitherto debarred. In 1108 he granted the 
serfs of Notre-Dame de Paris the privilege of battle with freemen 

'On the bailiffs of Philip Augustus, see Brussel, I., 495-505; Walker, 
129-137. Langlois, Revue Hist., XLII. (1890), p. loi, Les Origines du Parle- 
meni de Paris, compsLves them to the justices in eyxe {justicarii itinera^ites) oi 
Angevin England. But Stubbs holds that " tftere is no occasion to look for a 
precedent for the institution of itinerant justices (in England) in the misst 
dominici of Charles the Great or the measures of Louis the Fat." — Chron. Bene- 
dict, Peterburgensis, Rolls Series, II., Introd. Ivii. It would be profitless to 
inquire into the origin of this institution of Louis VI. even admitting it were 
ever a customary form, and not an extraordinary usage in his time. Whether 
the plan were suggested by the ancient Carlovingian practice, or by the inno- 
vations of Henry I. of England (see Stubbs, Select Charters, 7th ed., p. 141); 
whether the reforms of Henry I. were prior to those of Louis VI. or not ; 
whether those of either king were suggested by Carlovingian practice or Nor- 
man influence — these must be matters largely of speculation. Brunner [Schwur- 
gericht, pp. 112 ff.) argues for the priority of the itinerant justices of Nor- 
mandy to those of England. But this sheds no light on priority between 
Louis VI. and Henry I. Stubb's remark seems to me to be eminently wise : 
" In this point, as well as in others, it seems far more natural to suppose that 
similar circumstances suggested similar institutions." — Const. History of Eng- 
land, I. 418. 

^ H. F., X., 121, note a.; XL, 484, note b. 

sDuCange, Duellium. On the legislation of Philip Augustus against the 
duel, see Delisle, Catalogue des Actes de Phillippe Auguste, Paris, 1856, No. 861 
and appendix, p. 522; Ordonnances, XL, 250, 283. Philip IV. abolished it in 
1302 throughout the realm (Secretan, 469). The clergy advocated the equaliza- 
tion of witnesses before the law. See the letter of Ivo of Chartres. — H. F., 
XV., 52. Cf. Mabillon, 601. 
Luchaire, Manuel, 538. 



38 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

before the courts/ In 1109 the right was extended to serfs of 
the abbey of Sainte-Genevieve de Paris.' The next year those of 
the bishop of Paris were admitted to testify in forensibus et civili- 
bus caiisis vel placitis adversics liberos homines^ and in hit those 
of the priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs/ In 1128a notable 
case occurred. Louis had admitted the serfs of the chapter of 
Chartres to the privileges of witness and trial by battle ; the dis- 
affected freemen pleaded the former's servile condition as a dis- 
barment, whereupon the king declared any person who refused 
to accept the royal decree guilty of treason and an enemy of the 
state. ^ Such acts on the part of the king tended to discourage 

' Ego Ludovicus, Dei dementia Francorum rex, communi quidem episco- 
porum ac procerum nostrorum consilio et assensu, regie auctoritatis decreto, 
instituo, decerno, ut servi sancte Parisiensis ecclesiae illi scilicet qui proprie ad 
canonicos pertinent, adversus omnes homines tarn liberos quam servos, in omni- 
bus causis, placitis et negotiis, liberam et perfectam habeant testificandi et bel- 
landi licentiam, et nemo unquam, servitutis occasionem eis opponens, in eorum 
testimonio ullam dare presumat calumpniam. Hac autem ratione licentiam 
testificandi ea que viderint et audierint eis concedimus, quod, si aliquis liber 
homo in eadem causa de falso testimonio illos contradicere et conprobare volue- 
rit, aut suam conprobationem duello perficiat, aut, eorum sacramentum sine 
ulla alia conlradictione recipiens, illorura testimonio adquiescat. Quodsi ali- 
quis temeraria presumptione illorum testimonium in aliquo refutaverit aut 
calumpniaverit, non solum regie auctoritatis et publice institucionis reus existat, 
sed querelam negocii sui vel placiti inrecuperabiliter amittat ; ita scilicet ut 
presumptuosus calumpniator de querela sua, si querat ulterius, non audiatur, et 
si aliquid ab eo queratur, alterius querele reus et convictus omnino habeatur. 
Aliud etiara statuimus ut predictur calumpniator ; nisi de tanta calunpnie culpa 
Parisiensis ecclesie satisfecerit, excommunicationis mucrone feriatur et testi- 
monium fatiendum interea non admittatur. — Tardif, No. 334. 

^ Ibid., No. 341. 

3 Ibid., No. 345. The quotation is from a letter of Ivo of Chartres which con- 
tinues : Dilectus filius noster Ludovicus Francorum rex pro utilitate ecclesiastici 
ita consulendum arbitratus est, ut episcoporum ac procerum consilio et assensu 
institueret Parisiensis ecclesiae famulos in omnibus causis, placitis et negotiis 
adversus omnes homines tam liberos quam servos et perfectam testificandi et 
bellandi licentiam, ita ut nemo eorum testimonio pro ecclesiasticae servitutis 
occasione calumniam inferat. — H. F., XV., 52. 

^Ibid., No. 346. Cf. No. 371. 

5 Luchaire, Annales, No. 408. There is a capital account of a judicial 
duel in Galbert de Bruges, chap. Iviii. 



THE COURT AND ITS JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS. 39 

the judicial duel, for it humilated a freeman to have to fight a 
villain, while it correspondingly elevated the servile class in their 
own esteem and the eye of the law.' 

The practice of appeal, as instituted by Louis VI., ^ was an 
entire interpolation in the feudal law of the land. The great- 
ness of this act has not failed to elicit the admiration of histori- 
ans. Montesquieu^ characterized it as "a veritable revolution." 
Hitherto, the dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine, the counts of 
Brittany, Flanders, Champagne, and Toulouse had enjoyed the 
privilege of final decision.* This condition was of course, a 
result of the dissipation of the ancient Carlovingian authority. 
In the days of Charles the Bald, and after him, when royalty was 
fast becoming a dignity merely, and not a power, the dukes and 
counts of the provinces used for their own ends, and against the 
king, the authority delegated to them. By every possible means 
they prevented access to the royal court. Thus the king's 

'Cf. Lampreclit, 216-7. The customs of Lorris provided for a fine in case 
of forfeit, if tire duel were once agreed upon : — Si vadia duelli temere dederint 
homines de communia et praepositi assensu, antequam dentur obsides, concor- 
daverint, et si de legitimis hominibus duellium factum fuerit obsides devicti 
centum et duodecim solidos persolvent— Art. 14, Ordon7iances, XL, 201. 

-Luchaire, Inst. Mon., L, 300-1. Luchaire, La Coiir du Roi et ses fonc- 
tions judiciaires sous le rigne de Louis VI., pp. 23-4. Acad, des Imcript., XXX., 
590. Aubert, Le Parlement de Paris de Phillippe-la-Bel a Charles VII. (1314- 
1422), ch. i. C. P. Marie-Haas, U Administration de la France, I., 186 
Eminent savants, among them Brussel (I., 163, 178, 227), Henrion, De FAutoriti 
judiciaire en France, Introd., p. 55, and Mably {Observations surFHist. de 
France, livre III., ch. iii) have denied this ; the last holding that such usage 
was not in effect until the reign of Philip Augustus; but the fact is well authen- 
ticated. The cases of the bishop of Arras (H. F., XV., 342-3; Langlois, 
Textes Relatifs a'V Histoire du Parlement, No. VII ; cf. Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 
300) and of the people of Sainte-Severe, are clear evidence (Suger, ch. xi.). 
Huguenin (p. 17) holds that Suger is responsible for the reform, but as the 
work is an unqualified eulogy of the abbot of St. Denis, the statement may not 
be wholly trusted. The truth is, Louis VI. and Suger were so agreed in policy 
that it is often difficult to distinguish with whom the real honor lies. 

3" L'introduction des appels dans les moeurs judiciaires fut une veritable 
revolution." Quoted by Langlois, Revue Hist., XLII (1890), p. 100. Les 
Origines du Parlement de Paris. 

< Brussel, I., 234-5 ; Luchaire, Manuel, 257. 



40 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

judicial power became almost nullified save in his direct domain. 
But to this mediatization there was one exception. In the hie- 
rarchical constitution of feudalism, the highest suzerain was the 
king. Beneath him the lords were judges in their own domains, 
as the king in his, but only on condition of giving ear to all 
demands for justice.^ This obligation was the correlative of his 
obedience to the king. In case of failure of justice {defectus 
justitice) only, did the king have original jurisdiction over rear 
vassals.^ But Louis, by instituting the practice of appeal, inau- 
gurated something radically new.^ True appeal is distinctly anti- 
feudal ; it implies deference to a higher jurisdiction, the 
supremacy of another will.'' It recognizes the majesty of the 
king; the superiority of the king's law — the legitimate right of 
royalty to cover with its shield all the law and all the persons 

'Pardessus, 27-8. 

^DuCange, Defectus justiticE. Failure of justice might occur, too, if the 
attendance at the lord's court were too reduced ; or when the court failed to 
convene. In Brittany, however, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries — for 
Louis VI. made no attempt to coerce a vassal so far removed — there was no 
appeal, even in case of denial of justice. (Luchaire, Manuel, 257.) 

3 L'idee de I'appel dtait en principe etrangfere a la justice feodale .... Ce 
fut la transition entre I'ancien appel, qui n'est qu'une declaration d'incomp^- 
tence, et I'appel veritable, qui repose sur l'idee que le tribunal superieur a une 
connaissance superieure du droit, en vertu de laquelle on lui accorde le pouvoir 
de reformer le premier jugement. — Secretan, 475-6. 

''Dans I'appel, on defere a une jurisdiction superieure le jugement rendu 
par un juge inferieur; la cause, d^ja jugee en premiere instance, I'est de nou- 
veau. L'appel suppose I'existence d'une jugement, dont on demande la refor- 
mation. La defaulte de droit suppose que le proces n'a pas €i€ ou n'a pu etre 
jug^ ; le recours au suzerain, dans ce cas, a pour objet qu'il statue sur ce procfes, 
dont son vassal n'a pas pris connaissance, et c'est dans la verity des mots, une 
Evocation. II en r^sulte une difference essentielle, qui a du faire admettre sans 
contestation le recours pour defaulte de droit, meme contre les grands vassaux. 
Ce recours qui, par la nature des choses, ne pouvait etre port^ que devant le 
roi, ne subordonnait pas, a proprement parler, la jurisdiction de ses seigneurs a 
celle du roi ; il n'avait lieu prdcisement que parce qu'ils refusaient d'user de 
leur droit de justice ; ils dtaient les maltres de le render sans objet, en faisant 
juger la cause dans leur cour, la saine raison ne permettant pas qu'il put exister 
des proces, ou des plaideurs, qui ne trouveraient pas de juges. Les lois de la 
f^odalite reprouvaient un tel refus ; et celui-la seul pouvait, en definitive, 
faire justice du refus, a cette meme feodalitd reconnaissait les droits de suze- 
rain. — Pardessus, 79-80. Cf. Secretan, 476. 



THE COURT AND 1 TS JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS. 4 1 

directly or remotely seeking redress. This institution of appeal 
does not imply a sort of supreme feudal court, as Mably held 
would be required', but inasmuch as the palatins in the time of 
Louis VI. were beginning to become an inner council" and the 
Parlement of Paris was originally a portion of the curia regis set 
apart to hear petitions, is it not possible that we have, in this 
creation of Louis VI., almost the initiatory step in the creation of 
that body? 3 Although the new method obtained slowly, the 
competence of the royal court in appeal not becoming greatly 
effective until the middle of the thirteenth century, when the 
lineaments of the Parlement grow out of the darkness of its 
origin, still the honor of this truly royal modification of the 
feudal law is due to Louis VI.'' 

The next important step in the evolution of the Parlement 
must have been when the court became a stationary body, per- 
manently seated at Paris. The honor of making such a change, 
however, cannot be attributed to Louis le Gros.^ In the 
' See Pardessus, Livre III., ch. iii. 
^Luchaire, Inst. Mo7i., I., 199-200. 
^Ibid., II., 327. 

4Langlois, Revue Hist., XLII. (1890), p. 99, Les Origines du Parlement de 
Paris). For the steps in the progress of appeal, see p. 100 and notes. The 
competence of the court in the thirteenth century is shown in Langlois, Textes 
relatifs aVHistoire du Parlement, Nos. XXIII, XXX. 

5 " On pourrait croire que cette mesure de rendre la cour du roi sddentaire 
a Paris est anterieure a I'annee 1120, si Ton considerait comme v^ritables, ou 
du moins comme non altdres, deux diplomes de Louis VI., du 12 Avril 11 20, et 
du 10 Janvier 1121 (H. R, XVII., 269) en faveur de I'abbaye de Tiron, con- 
firmes par Louis VII. le 29 Mars 1164 {Ibid., 272), dans lesquels il est dit, qu'en 
vertu de la protection et sauvegarde accord^e a cette abbaye, les causes qui 
I'interessent seront portees coram tnagnis prcesidejitialibus nostris Parisius, vet 
alibi, ubi nostra prce-excellens et stipreina curia residebit, et qu'il en sera de meme 
des affaires jugees par la justice de ce monastfere entre ses hommes. Mais la 
f aussete de ces dates est evidente, qu'il n'est pas possible d'en argumenter." — 
Pardessus, 97-8. Cf. Les Olim., t. I., XXXIV. ; Bibliothlque de VEcole des 
Chartes, third series, t. V., 516, ^.— Charles fausses de V abbaye de Tiron; 
Luchaire, Annales, appendix VIII. (p. 323)- 

Luchaire {Inst. Mon., I., 307) has this to say : — " A partir du regne de 
Louis le Gros, Paris devient de plus en plus le sdjour habituel du souverain et 
par suite le siege ordinaire du governement. II en resulte qu'en fait, et sans 



42 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

increased importance given the court owing to the extension of 
its jurisdiction, one is surprised that he should have still retained 
the ambulatory" character of the court. Perhaps, though, the 
very activity of Louis VI. made this change undesirable, since he 
always sought to assume personal direction of the proceedings. 
As the court was the nascent form of the later Parlement, perma- 
nence, whenever acquired, must have hastened the course begun 
in the establishment of appellate jurisdiction. 

It is generally supposed that the institutions of feudalism 
were fixed and well defined, whereas, in point of fact, the rela- 
tions of high suzerain, vassal and rear vassal were in constant 
flux.^ From time to time, there are positive changes in feudal 

qu'aucune regie ait jamais ete etablie a cat ^gard, la plus grande partie des 
proc&s soumis a la cour du roi sont debattus et termines a Paris, dans le palais 
meme de la cit^. On pent affirmer, d'apres le releve des localites oii la cour du 
roi a exerce ses fonctions judiciaires, que, sous le regne de Louis VII., pour 
deux ou trois proces qui sont juges a Orleans ou a Etampes, quinze sont Tobjet 
d'un arret rendu a Paris. La proportion a du evidemment s'accroitre en faveur 
de la capitale sous les Capetiens du XIIP siecle. C'est ainsi que peu a peu, 
par la force meme des choses, on est arrive a, la determination d'un lieu fixe 
pour les sessions du Parlement." See in Ibid., II., app., No. XII, the list of 
sessions of the court from 1137 to 1180. With the above of Luchaire, cf. Lair, 
Des Hautes Cours Politiques en France, p. 5, and Aubert, Le Parlement de Paris 
de Phillippe4e-Bel a Charles VII. {12,14-/422), p. 7, who concur. 

'In the campaign into Auvergne (Suger, 108-10) the court is actually in 
the field : " Si sic judicaverint regni optimates, fiat" says William of Aquitaine. 
Suger continues : Super his igitur rex cum optimatibus regni consulens, dic- 
tante justicia, fidem, juramentum, obsidum sufficientiam suscipit (p. no). 

As long as the king's court was a movable one, the king carried about 
with him the original text of the law, in rolls {rottili). It was in consequence 
of the seizure of a number of these by Richard Coeur de Lion, 5 July, 1194. 
that the idea was suggested to Philip Augustus of preserving the text of all 
the laws as state archives, and of opening authentic registers of decisions in 
civil and criminal cases. Pfister, Le Rhgne de Robert le Pieux, p. 207. The 
actual account of this event is in Roger de Hoveden, Regnum Anglicarum 
Scriptores, 741 (Rolls Series) and in Guillaume le Breton, H. F., XVII., 72. Cf. 
also Teulet, Tresor des Charles, I., xxv. 

''In the twelfth century the count of Champagne, who originally was a 
homager of the king only, held partly of the archbishop of Rheims, partly of 
the bishops of Langres, Chalons, Auxerre, Autun, the abbot of St. Denis, the 
duke of Burgundy, the Emperor — and the king. Brussel, I., 367. 



THE COURT AND ITS JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS. 43 

law. If " lordship and homage . . . were the links in the chain of 
steel which saved the world from being dissolved into a chaos of 
jarring elements,'" nevertheless the form and nature of the 
links were changed, if not from year to year, certainly from 
century to century ; new measures were introduced, old ones 
taken away. One such link seems to have been forged by Louis 
le Gros — that of liege homage, "" an institution destined at a 
later day to embroil France and England in serious conflict, 
when the memorable struggle between Edward III. and Philip 
of Valois turned on the question whether the English king was 
bound to do simple or liege homage for Guyenne.^ 

The prolongation and importance of Louis VI. 's military 
expeditions must have occasioned this new obligation. By it the 
vassal was held to personal service, irrespective of the traditional 
forty days, or of the territory to be entered ; hitherto the vassal 
had not been bound to other personal service and could even 
send a chevalier in his stead.'' 

'Pollock, Scieizce of Politics., 47. 

* Renault, I., 196. This statement needs the following qualification: 
The term liege homage occurs in texts of the late part of the eleventh century 
(Glasson, IV., 298.) DuCange cites three cases, but the terms homage and 
liege homage are used convertibly, and the documents are so confused as 
hardly to be entitled to very great consideration (Brussel, I., 109). If the 
creation of the new relation is not due to Louis le Gros (see Tardif, No. 388 : 
" Stephane, jure perpetuo, et in feodo et ut ligio homini nostro concedimus "), 
the strict legal definition, as well as insistence upon its fulfilment, seem to be 
due to him. (See Nouvelle Revue historique de droit frangais et etranger, 
1883. Vol. VII., p. 659 — Homme Lige.) However, liege homage obtained 
but very slightly, outside of the royal domain, in the twelfth century. In the 
time of Philip Augustus, the Count of Champagne did liege homage to the king, 
but it was at that time an innovation. (Glasson, IV., 292, citing Brussel, I., 116.) 

For the distinction between fidelity and homage, which are often con- 
fused, see Brussel. I. 19 ff., Luchaire, Manuel, 186, and Viollet, Hist, du Droit 
frangais, 559-563, which gives a good bibliography, A bottom fidelity was a 
relation far surpassing homage in dignity ; it implied- a moral bond of loyalty, 
and high position. Homage carried with it all the engagements of vassalage, 
but one might be z.fidelis without being a vassal. All vassals were necessarily 
fideles, but aWJideles were not vassals. — Cf. Flach, I., 245. 

3Lalanne, Did. Hist., p. 997. 

4 Quant a I'hommage lige, c'^tait -^le plus grave [de [ tous et il dtait 



44 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

On the other hand, Louis VI. raised the position of king of 
France far higher than hitherto, by enunciating the doctrine, the 
king can do homage to none. This doctrine, that the crown 
owed fealty to no one, naturally followed from his definition of 
royalty as a power original in type.^ He declined to do homage 
for the Vexin'', which was a vassal county of St. Denis, on the 

surtout relatif au service militaire ; I'hommage lige devait le service mili- 
taire en personne et pendant toute la duree de la guerre ; tandis que le 
vassal ordinaire n'^tait tenu du service militaire que pendant quarante jours a 
partir de celui ou Ton avait ete assemble ; de sorte qu'au bout de ce temps il 
pouvait rentrer dans son chateau. En outre, il ne devait pas le service per- 
sonnel, et pouvait envoyer un chevalier a sa place. (Glasson, IV., 296. Cf. 
Lalanne, Diet. Hist, ut supra.) 

"■ Cf. Suger, 80. 

2 Vilcassini siquidem (quod est inter Isaram et Ettam) nobilem comitatum, 
quem perhibent immunitates ecclesias proprium beati Dionysii feodum, quem 
etiam rex Francorum, Ludovicus Phiiippi, accelerans contra imperatorem 
Romanum insurgentem in regnum Francorum, in pleno capitulo beati Dionysii 
professus est se ab eo habere et jure signiferi, si rex non esset, hominium ei debere. 
— Oiluvres de Suger [Soc. de I' Hist, de F.) par Lecoy de la Marche. Suger, 
De rebus in administratione sua gestis (ch. iv., pp. 161-2). Cf. Aclaircissements 
et observations, pp. 442-3. Felibien, Hist, de Fabbaye de Saint-Denis ; also (Feli- 
bien) Oriflamme, 154, ff. ; Tardif, No. 391; Combes, 133; Henault, I., 180; 
Acad, des Inscrip., L., p. 499. The honor of this truly royal act has been gen- 
erally attributed to Philip Augustus, as in Walker, 9. The large territorial 
acquisition by Philip Augustus gave opportunity for numerous applications of 
this principle, but the germ of the principle is found in the act recorded above 
of Louis VI. 

In the Bibliothique de V Ecole des Chartes (XXXIV. p. 244 ff., 1873) 
M. VioUet publishes Une grande Chronique latine de Saint-Denis {^Observations 
pour servir a Vhistoire critique des CEuvres de Suger). The account there 
differs somewhat from that quoted above : — " Dixit se (Louis VI.) more 
priscorum regum auriflammam vellejsumere ab altari, afl&rmando quod hujus 
bajulatio ad comitem Vulcassini de jure spectabat, et quod de eodem com- 
itatu, nisi auctoritas regia obsisteret, ecclesise, homagium facere teneba- 
tur" (p. 245). Candor confesses that a difficulty arises from this passage, 
as M. Viollet admits : " Les mots more priscorum regum pourront induire i 
penser que ce passage est posterieur a Suger, car le Vexin fran9ais ayant €X.€ 
rduni a la couronne sous Philippe P"^, I'usage deporter I'oriflamme dtait, 
dira-t-on, tout nouveau pour les rois de France au temps de Louis VI. et de 
Suger. Suger aurait-il done considdre cet usage comme bien ant^rieur k 
Phillippe I" et a Louis VI. {priscorum regum) ? Mais une tradition aussi 
fausse n'a pu se faire jour que longtemps aprfes Louis VI. ; et d'ailleurs, dans 



THE COURT AND ITS JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS. 45 

ground of the superiority of the king to any suzerain, lay or 
ecclesiastical. The importance of this act of Louis VI. can 
hardly be estimated too highly. Its significance lies in the fact 
that it was an assertion of superiority in kind, of the king, over 
all ; he was his own peer ; none on the soil of France was his 
suzerain. 

le meme phrase, le roi considere ce droit comme lui etant echu par rintermediare 
des comtes du Vexin; il y a la une contradiction flagrante qui decile un 
rajeunissements posterieur a Sugar. Le lecteur reste libre de s'en tenir a cette 
objection et de mettre ce passage au nombre des rajeunissements que j'ai 
signales tout-a-rheure ; mais, pour mon compte, je ne m'arrete pas a cette 
difficult^ et voici ma reponse : La phrase qu'on vient de lire, loin de receler une 
erreur, parait contenir, en abrege, les points fondamentaux de I'histoire exacte 
de I'oriflamme. En effet, on se trompe en disant que les rois de France 
porterent I'oriflamme depuis annexion du Vexin et non ant^rieurement. Toute- 
fois, cette annexion a joue un certain role dans I'histoire de I'oriflamme, et ce 
role est ici relate . . . Certes, un pareil expose est tres-vague et incomplet ; 
nous ne tenons guere ici qui les extremites d'une chaine dont les anneaux 
intermediaires nous echappent ; mais e'en est assez pour que nous nous gardions 
de rejeter comme n'ayant pu gtre ecrite par Suger une phrase qui precisement 
relate ces deux donndes fondamentales. Ce passage a pu, d'ailleurs, etre 
retouche quant a la redaction ; on est surpris d'y trouver le nom de Suger ; 
le style direct et premiere personne seraient plus naturels." 

See further on this act (Tardif, No. 379); Suger, 105, note i, and Lebeuf, 
Histoire de Paris, III., 250 ff. 



CHAPTER IV. 
ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION. 

CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION. 

Of the administrative body of the king, the features of which 
may be vaguely traced in the beginning of the eleventh century/ 
five members were important : the seneschal, the butler, the con- 
stable, the chamberlain, and the chancellor.'' Of these the senes- 
chal and the chancellor were by far the most influential.^ 
Besides administrative and judicial authority, they possessed 
domains and benefices, sometimes of vast extent."* 

The seneschal was the director-general of the realm. His 
prototype was the ancient mayor of the palace. He was the 
second person in the kingdom,^ and in case of a weak king, like 

jLuchaire, Manuel, 257. 

*It is difficult to determine the order of precedence of these officers. The 
chancellor always closes the list, which, as above given, is the order in the 
reign of Louis le Gros, when their character and position are most defined. 
(Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 164. Langlois, Textes Kelatifs du Parlement de Paris, 
No. VIII.) The butler and constable appear in 1043. Four years later are 
found the seneschal and chamberlain, and all five sign together for the first time 
in 1060. (Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 167.) Their attributes are, at first, some- 
what indistinct; in the eleventh century there begins to be a separation of 
duties, and in the reign of Philip I. the institution tends to regulate itself. But, 
as pointed out, the documents are obscured by a host of intrusive names. 
Under Philip I. there appears, for a short time an officer {dispensator) who 
seems to have been not unlike the modern butler. — Luchaire, Manuel, 588. 

3 Luchaire, Mamiel, 522. On the chancellor, see Brussel, I., 535, 628. 

4 Luchaire, Manuel, 260 ; Brussel I., 629. 

s Simon, seneschal of Philip I., is styled " consul et regis Francorum pri- 
mipilus."— H. F., XV., 541. The account of Hugh de CJeers (H. F., XII., 
493), regarding the institution of the seneschalship and the relations of the 
Count of Anjou to Louis VI. may be considered apocryphal, although accepted 
by Sismondi, V., 135 ff; Combes. 77-8; and other early historians. The 

46 



ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION. 47 

Louis VII. he might become the controlling will in the adminis- 
tration. He had control of the machinery of local administra- 
tion, the supervision of the prevots and other agents of the king; 
he acted as president of the curia regis in case of the absence of 
the king, and on occasion, took the field as royal commandant.' 

The power of these officers, especially the seneschal, united 
with the evil of the hereditability of fiefs,^ in the twelfth century 
became a serious menace to the crown.^ In order to reduce the 
danger, the kings had recourse either to violent deprivation of 
title, or the policy, more and more frequently adopted, of leaving 
an office vacant for a number of years, or of dividing its duties, 
thus leaving the holder nothing but the ascription of authority.'' 

Of the three lesser officers their titles sufficiently describe the 
nature of their duties. The chamberlain seems to have sunk 
the most rapidly in dignity and power. Under Henry I. he com- 
mands the army; at the end of the eleventh century the senes- 
chal has supplanted him, although he is still an influential per- 
sonage; under Louis VI. he has slipped down to third place. ^ 

The constable was a survival of the old marshal, and is first 
mentioned in the time of Henry I. (1043). He was then, as the 
name implies, master of the horse.* Later certain minor judicial 

writer attempts to prove the office at the time of Louis VI. an hereditary 
fief in the house of Anjou, who held the place, as it were, ex officio, and that 
the actual incumbent did him (the Count of Anjou) homage. The account is 
singularly full of details, and describes the interview of Louis VI. with Foulque, 
and the subsequent homage of Garland, in 11 18. But the purported facts are 
sustained by no charter. The probability is that the concessions pretended to 
have been made by Louis VI. were fabricated between 1150 and 1168 in the 
interests of Henry II. of England and Count of Anjou, the rival of Louis VII. 
See Luchaire, Annales, 325-6: Inst. Mon., I., x, n. 2 and p. 180. 

'Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 177-184. 

^ Brussel (I., 71). thinks that benefices were hereditary in the time of Hugh 
Capet, and cites the famous letter of Eudes II., count of Chartres to Robert II. 
According to Luchaire {Inst. Mon., II., 4 ff.) the kings struggled against the 
inheritance of fiefs until the second half of the eleventh century. 

3 Luchaire, Manuel, 260. 

'^Ibid. 519. 

s Luchaire, Manuel, 523. He is called "princeps exercitus Francorum." — 
Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 169, citing H. F. XL, 207. 

* Luchaire, Inst. Mon,, I., 171. 



48 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

powers were given him, which were increased as the seneschal 
was deprived of his power. Finally he succeeded to the military- 
rights of the seneschal, and in the fourteenth century was chief 
of the royal forces.' 

The butler never seems to have enjoyed the measure of power 
that the seneschal and chancellor had. In early Capetian times 
his name was most often after that of the seneschal ; but in the time 
of Philip I. he signs next to the last.^ The place never seems to 
have been a menace, for even after the revolution in the palace, 
under Louis VII. and Philip Augustus, it was attached to the 
family of La Tour, of Senlis.3 

The crisis in what was the immediate household of the king, 
fell in the reign of Louis le Gros, and was brought about by the 
inordinate ambition of Stephen de Garland. History affords 
few cases of so complete a political ascendency acquired by the 
members of a single family as that attained by the brothers Gar- 
land during the reign of Louis VI. The exigencies of circum- 
stance and the rare abilities of the four brothers, Anselm, William, 
Stephen and Gilbert, alike account for the fact. When Louis VI. 
began to reign he was assailed by enemies both open and secret; 
even his own kindred plotted against him."* To this was added 
the hatred of the house of Rochefort, the turbulence of the 
seigneur of Puiset and of many another baron, the traditional 
enmity of the Anglo-Norman king, and the hostility of the counts 
of Anjou and Blois. In the midst of such trials, the intelligence 
and ability of the Garlands stood Louis in good stead.^ Anselm 
was a faithful seneschal until the day when he fell in the service 
of his master in the third siege of the chateau de Puiset.* Will- 
iam succeeded him, and was present at the memorable defeat of 
Brenneville,^ August 20, 11 19. Stephen, meanwhile, was chan- 

'Luchaire, Manuel, 526. "" Ibid., 525. 

sLuchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 177 On these lesser officers, see Brussel, I., 
628-635. 

^Ord. Vit. IV., 196 ff. Suger, c. xvii. 

s Sugar, 21, 36. ^Ibid.,Tg. 

7 Luchaire, Remarques sur la succession des Grands Officiers de la Couronne 
(1108-1180), p. I. 



ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION. 49 

cellor, an office which became his ecclesiastical pretensions, for the 
chancellorship was never held by a layman. It was he who, before 
Suger became a prominent figure in the government, first moulded 
the policy of the king in his conflict with the denationalizing 
reform party in the church.' 

In 1 1 20 William de Garland died. Then an extraordinary 
arrangement of the royal household was made. In order to fill 
the vacant seneschalship, Louis VI. advanced his chancellor,' 
allowing him, at the same time, to retain the more clerkly position. 
A change so unique elicited astonishment even in that age of 
men-at-trms, — a churchman in the first military rank of the 
realm '.3 This double investiture, continuing for seven years, 
fattened the ambition of the churchman. As chancellor and chief 
chaplain he enjoyed the livings of a vast number of ecclesiastical 
benefices, dependent immediately upon the crown. He was arch- 
deacon of Paris,* archdeacon of Notre-Dame de Paris,^ deacon of 
Saint-Samson d'Orl^ans,' deacon of the abbey of Sainte-Gene- 
vieve,^ deacon of the chapter of Sainte-CroixM'Orleans,^ and 
deacon of Saint-Aignan d'Orleans.' In order that he might be 
able to carry the church of Orleans in his pocket, as it were, he 

'Luchaire, Louis le Grosetson Palatins, Revue Hist., XXXVII., 1888. 
==Luchaire, Remarques stir la succession des Grands Officiers de la Couronne 

(1108-I180), p. II. 

3" Quis sane non miretur imo et detestetur unius esse personae et armatum 
ducere militiam et alba stolaque indutum, in medio ecclesiae pronunciare evan- 
gelium ? Magis honorabile ducit putari se militem, curiam ecclesiae praefert."— 
St. Bernard, Epistle 78. H. F., XV., 547- Cf. Chron. Maurin, H. F., XII., 76-7 = 

Interea defuncto Willelmo Anselli Dapiferi germane, Stephanus Cancel- 
larius. . . . major regiae domus effectus. Hoc retroactis generationabus fuerat 
inauditum, ut homo, qui Diaconatus fungebatur officio, militiae simul post 
regem duceret principatum. Hie vir industrius et saecularii praeditus sapientia, 
cum multis ecclesiasticorum honorum redditibus, tum familiaritate regis, quam 
sic habebat, ut ei potius a quibusdam, diceretur imperare quam servire, tem- 
porali felicitate supra cseteros mortates nostris temporibus efflorebat. 

4Luchaire, Annales, Nos. 53, 206. 

^Ibid., Nos. 272, 284. 

^Ibid., No. 62. 

''Ibid., Nos. 94, 109. 

^Ibid., Nos. 125, 173. 

^ Ibid., No. 176. 



5° DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

had prevailed upon the king to advance Hugh of Orleans to the 
bishopric of Laon and confer the deaconate of the cathedral 
church upon himself.' But he aspired to a bishopric. In iioo 
he had made an unsuccessful attempt to secure that of Beauvais.' 
In 1 1 14, when Geoffroi, its bishop, died, he demanded the place. 
But pope Pascal II., who was no lover of the priestly politician 
because of his hostility to the Clugny reform movement, as well 
as on account of his unbounded craving for power, was scandal- 
ized at the chancellor's request. The action of the pontiff elicited 
from Stephen the haughty rejoinder that he did not serve the 
king so much as govern him.^ 

At last the ambition of the seneschal overreached itself. Like 
his predecessors and colleagues in the royal household, he sought 
to retain the seneschalship in the Garland family. As an ecclesi- 
astic, he could not transmit the ofhce directly; but in 11 27 he 
gave his niece in marriage to Amauri de Montfort, together with 
the chateau de Rochefort and the assurance that her husband 
should succeed him.* The king evidently was not cognizant of 
the plan. It was a crisis in the history of the monarchy. Would 
the king allow a place of so much power to be disposed of without 
his consent? Would he suffer himself to be dictated to? Would 
he dare allow the vicious principle of hereditability of fiefs to 
become attached to the highest dignity of the realm? The 
attempt of the seneschal was a grave blunder. Louis le Gros' 
sluggish suspicions were at last aroused. Stephen was deprived 
of his honors and driven from the court^ with his brotiwr Gil- 
bert, the butler.^ Stung by the disgrace, Stephen and his accom- 
plice made common cause with Henry I. of England and 
Thibaud IV., the Count of Blois.^ The strain on the monarchy 
was intense. The king had besides to face the now open hostility 
of the reform clergy. Paris lay under an interdict.^ Henry I. 

^ "Luchsiiie, Annales, No. 133. ^Ibid., No. 17. 

3 Chron. Maurin, H. F., XII., 73. 
4Suger, 116. Chron. Maurin, H. F. XII., 77. 
sSuger, 116. 

^ Luchaire, Remarques sttr la Succession des Grands Officiers de la Couronne, 
7Suger, 117. Chron. Maurin, H. F., XII., 77. 
^ Luchaire, Annales, No. 439. 



ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION. 5 1 

hovered on the French border.^ The surrounding country was 
pillaged by the outlawed Garlands.^ Ralph, the count of Verraan- 
dois, cousin and staunch ally of Louis, had fallen in the siege of 
the chateau de Livri, the seat of the house of Garland.^ If ever 
Louis VL merited the title of "Wide-awake" (/'^m7/^)Mt was 
then. Honorius II. was coaxed into rescinding the interdict, 
to the deep chagrin of St. Bernard and the reformers.' Profiting 
by a moment of calm, Louis took care to have his son Philip 
associated with him in the government,* that the question of 
succession might be assured. Then he turned his arms against 
the rebels. After a desultory conflict of four years, Stephen 
succumbed to the untiring energy of the king, (1132)' and was 
restored to the chancellor's desk. His political role was ended ; 
his influence and poM^er had passed to abler and safer hands, and 
at his death the seal of his office passed quietly over to Algrin, 
the vice-chancellor.^ 

This revolt in the palace, which culminated in the fall of the 
Garlands, marks a decisive point in the history of the monarchy. 
The continuity of office was broken. In this respect Louis le 
Gros founded the traditions which were followed out by his suc- 
cessors.' 

'Luchaire, ^«««/f^, No. 414. ^/i^zV., No. 428. 

3/(Jzi/., No. 420. Suger, 117. 

4 Louis is called by turns "/f Gros'' {pinguis, crassiis), which is most 
common; "the Fighter" {le Batailleur); "the Great" {le Grand); "the 
White ';.(/£ Blanc), alluding to his pale complexion, due to poisoning in youth 
(Ord. Vit. IV., 197) ; and he is also called '' le Jusiicier." 
sSee the letter of St. Bernard, H. F., XV., 54S, 55°. 

^Luchaire, Annales, No. 433- Philip Augustus was the first monarch of 
France who did not have his successor crowned in his lifetime.— Brussel, I., 66. 
7Luchaire, Annales, No. 487- The principal episode of this war was the 
capture of Livri ; see Bibliotheque de V A cole des Chartes, XXXVIIL, 480. 

8 Luchaire, Remarques stir la Succession des Grand Officiers de la Couronne, 
p. 34. 

9 "The consideration of the great offices of the crown under Philip Augus- 
tus has shown the completion under him of a process already begun by his 
grandfather and father. The great court offices, which the limited extent of the 
royal possessions under the early Capetians and the intimate association of the 
nobles of the He de France with the king in the administration of the govern- 
ment made useful under Henry L or Philip L, had proved dangerous to the 



52 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

After the fall of the Garlands for four years the seneschal's 
place was vacant/ and then another faithful count of Vermandois 
was appointed.* But the preponderant influence in the realm 
now rested with Suger.^ 

Suger's position was unique/ Up to this time, warlike char- 
acter, wealth, and achievement had been the qualifications for the 
office of chief minister. Suger was of humble birth,^ slight of 
stature, and in health was not strong ; but he had a luminous 
intellect, and a will which prompted him to act with judgment 
and despatch. The first relations of Louis and the future 

growing strength of the monarchy and unwieldy in administrative practice. 
Louis VI. and Louis VII. had tried to limit their power. Philip Augustus prac- 
tically abolished the two posts of greatest prominence, and, by his employment of 
men of lower position, made the three remaining offices chiefly honorary. No 
feature of this policy was original with Philip. It was that of his grandfather 
and father. — Walker, 55. On the position of the seneschal after Philip Augus- 
tus, see Pardessus, 268-270. 

Stubbs, Const Hist, of England, Vol. I., chap. xi. pp. 380-1, makes an instruc- 
tive comparative study of contemporary English and French institutions : " In 
England .... where the amount of public business was increasing rapidly in 
consequence of the political changes, and where it was of the utmost importance 
to avoid the creation of hereditary jurisdictions, it was absolutely necessary that 
a new system should be devised. The same need was felt in France ; and the 
same tide of events which threw the administration here into the hands of Bishop 
Roger, brought the management of affairs there into the hands of the Abbot Suger. 
In each case we see an ecclesiastical mayor of the palace ; a representative of 
the king in all capacities : lieutenant in his absence, chief agent in his pres- 
ence ; a prime minister in legal, financial, and even military affairs, but prevented 
by his spiritual profession from founding a family of nobles, or withdrawing 
from the crown the powers which he had been commissioned to sustain." 

^ The writs read vices dapiferi possidens. — Luchaire, Manuel, 521. 

^Luchaire, Inst. Mon., L, 185. '^Ibid. 

* Suger's eminent position is expressed in many ways by his biographer: 
" Prseerat palatio ; " " nee ilium a claustri cura prohiberat curia, nee a consiliis 
principum hunc excusaret monasterium ; " " cumque ab eo jura dictarentur nullo 
unquam pretio declinavit a recto ; " " prsecipua regni incumberent negotia ; " 
"ex eo siquidem tempore, quo primum regiis est adhibitus consiliis, usque 
advitae illius terminum constat regnum semper floruisse et in melius atque 
amplius, dilatatis terminis et hostibus subjugatis, fuisse provectum. Quo sub- 
lato de medio statim'sceptrum regni gravem ex illius absentia sensit jacturam." 
Willelmus — Vita Sugerii, Liber \.,passii?i. 

5 Suger, Introd., p. i. 



ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION. 53 

minister date from their school days in the fine old Capetian 
abbey of St. Denis." When Suger was appointed min- 
ister he had served a long apprenticeship. He had been episco- 
pal prevot of Berneval-by-the-sea,* in Normandy, and later of 
Touri,3 on the grand route from Chartres to Orleans. Here 
Suger was forced to assume the role of a warrior. Touri was fast 
being reduced to a waste by the depredations of the lord of 
Puiset, whose castle was hard by."* Here also began Suger's 
public career. In 1118 he was sent on a diplomatic mission to 
Pope Gelasius II., then at Maguelonne.^ Twice* he was sent to 
Rome itself. When Henry V. the emperor died, all western Europe 
awaited with anxiety the new election. Frederick of Swabia, 
Conrad of Franconia and Lothar, Count of Suplinberg, were 
candidates.^ For France the issue of the election was important. 
Henry had been hostile to France. Would the new emperor con- 
tinue his policy? Frederick was his nephew. The peace of 
France therefore required that Frederick be defeated. Suger 
believed that the juncture demanded his presence at Maintz, and 

' Suger, Introd., p. i. 

' Huguenin, 10. Huguenin thinks it is not unlikely that Suger's knowledge 
of law and diplomacy was here acquired. " Le religieux se trouve ainsi en com- 
munication avec le peuple le plus renomme, au moyen-age, pour la science 
juridique, et il a lui-meme un tribunal ou il prononce des jugements. Initid a 
la coutume de Normandie et aux lois de Guillaume le Conqudrant, il ne pent se 
trouver sans doute a une meilleure dcole, pour se perfectionner dans la science 
du droit, pour saisir les finesses et attendre atoutes les profondeurs de la juris- 
prudence . . . . Le Idgiste se montre ddja bien visiblement dans Suger," — pp. 
lo-ii. 

^Ibid., 22. 

^ Tauriacus igitur famosa Beati Dionysii villa, caput quidem aliarum ; et 
propria et specialis sedes Beati Dionysii, peregrinis et mercatoribus seu quibus- 
cumque viatoribus alimenta cibariorum in media strata, lassis etiam quietem 
quiete ministrans, intolerabilibus dominorum prsefati castri Puteoli angariis 
usque adeo miserabiliter premebatur ut . . . . jam colonis pene destituta langue- 
ret .... annonam et talliam sibi primum, deinde dapifero suo, deinde praspos- 
ito suo, rusticorum vectigalibus ad castrum deferri cogeret."— Suger, De rebus 
in administratione, c, xii. 

s Suger, 93. 

^ Ibid., 69, 99-100, 

7 Hist, du Roi Louis VII., c. 2. Huguenin, 68. 



54 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

although he had no official voice in the diet, he contrived to win 
the favor of the grand chancellor of the empire, the archbishop 
Adalbert, who directed the election.' Adalbert threw his influence 
in favor of Lothar of Saxony, and the hostility between the 
two great sections of the empire of Charles the Great was laid for 
a season. The great abbot's international influence also extended 
to England. Henry I. honored him with his confidence, and 
sought his advice.^ And yet, from a legal point of view, while 
Louis VI. reigned, Suger was never more than the abbot of St. 
Denis. He bore no secular title, even when the direction of the 
state was in his hands.^ He was neither seneschal nor chancellor;* 
In 1 132 Ralph of Vermandois replaced Stephen de Garland 
as seneschal. He added strength to the office without danger to 
the monarchy. He was, by the situation of his fief, the tradi- 
tional foe of the houses of Champagne and Coucy.^ It was 
through his solicitation, backed by substantial help, that Louis 
VI. undertook (1128) the campaign which at last reduced Thomas 
de Marie.* In 1132, by an alliance which nothing but political 
considerations could have prompted, Enguerran, the heir of the 
house of Coucy, married the niece of the seneschal, and the inter- 
ests of the Capetian monarchy became the interests of that his- 
toric family,^ whose once proud motto was— 

" Je ne suis roy ne comte aussy, 
Je suis le Sire de Coucy." 

' Huguenin, 69. " Ego Maynardus cum Suggerio .... in prsesentia D. 
Alberti venerabilis Maguntini archiepiscopi, in illo celebri colloquio quod de 
electione Imperatoris apud Maguntiam habitum est, banc pacis compositionem 
feci." etc. — Cartul. de Saint Denis, t. II., p. 475. See the account given in 
Hist, du Roi Louis VLL, c. 2, and notes. 

'^ " Familiarem me habebat (Henricus), venienti t-tiam .... occurebat, et 
quod multos suorum celeret de reformatione pacis, saepius mihi aperiebat. Unde 
crebro, Deo auxiliante, contigit nostro labore de multis guerris et implicatis 
multorum almulorum machinamentis ad bonam pacis compositionem pervenire. 
{Sugerii epist. ad Gaudef. comit. Andegav., H. F., XV., 521). 

3H. F., XII., 112. 

4Luchaire, Lnst. Mo7z., I., 185, 192-3.- 

5 Luchaire, Louis le Gros et son Palatins, Revue Hist., xxxvii, (1890) p. 269. 

* Suger, 1 14-6. 

7 Conti7iuator, Prcemonstr., H. F., xiii, 329. Enguerran was present at the 



ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION. 55 

LOCAL ADMINISTRATION. 

With the development of the central administration there had 
been a corresponding — even earlier ^ — evolution of local admin- 
istrative forms. These local officers were the prevots and their 
subordinates, vicars, beadles, and the mayors and sergeants of 
towns,' collectively known as ministerii or servientes.' 

The origin of the prevots is difhcult to trace ; but they can 
be found as far back as the time of Henry I. (1046)3 The insti- 
tution may have been suggested by the episcopal government, 
which from remote times was wont to designate by that title the 
managers of the estates of the church.'* Like other ofificers, the 
prevot held his place in fief. He was named and could be 
deposed by his sovereign, although theory and fact, at the end of 
the eleventh century, were often at variance, and the post not 
infrequently was hereditary.^ The judicial power of the prevot 
extended from simple misdemeanors up to graver crimes; but 
his most important function was to collect the revenue.^ Owing 
to the rudimentary condition of local governmental forms, the 
early kings had been induced to farm the revenues.'' This com- 
plication is the key to the apparently incongruous relations of 
king and prevots, which are presented throughout the twelfth 
century. Their semi-feudal tenure, and the petty tyrannies they 
employed in exacting tribute were inimical to the interests of the 
crown. Their excesses attained such proportions that sometimes 
whole districts were abandoned by the inhabitants.® This accounts 
for the exemptions lavished by the kings upon abbeys and com- 
munes.' Louis granted a large number of such privileges." It 
was also in order to prevent abuses from this source that he 

assembly of Vezelai, when Louis VII. took the cross. Hist, du Roi Louis VII.,. 
chap. X, p. 159. 

' Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 217-8. S Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 237. 

= Walker, 126, note 3. * Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 225. 

3 Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 209. ^ Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 225. 

< Luchaire, Manuel, 539. ^ Brussel, I., 394. 

5 Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 231-2. 

'"Luchaire, Annates, Nos. 42, 90, 102, 118, 123, 129, 139, 165, 176, 181, 182, 
198, 201, 202, 211, 227, 241, 273, 355, 365, 419, 451, 572, 606. 



56 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

planned the protecting intervention of special lieutenants,' an 
institution which Philip Augustus, thanks to the preparatory- 
work of his grandfather, was able to make efficient, for the value 
of the prevot depended upon his proximity to the king. " Their 
aggressiveness and persistence in attacking the powers of the 
clergy and small nobles, as well as their exactions from the non- 
noble class, doubtless aided the process of consolidation of the 
royal power in the crown domain."^ 

' See this dissertation, pp. 35-7. 

2 Walker, 127. On the prevots, see Luchaire, Inst, Mon., I., 214-7 j 225- 
41. Walker, 126-8. The excellent discussion of Luchaire precludes any 
extended treatment in the present work. Besides the prevots and their under- 
lings, bishops and abbots were considered agents of the king, " Ce phenomena 
historique est aussi curieux qu'incontestable." (Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 209). 
They used their power to excommunicate in the interests of the civil authority. 
—Cf. H. F., XV., 152. 



CHAPTER V. 

FEUDAL AND PUBLIC ECONOMY. 

A monarch of Louis VI. 's stamp could not be content with 
the unsatisfactory work of granting exemptions or breaking down 
the hereditary prevotal caste merely.^ He had genuinely con- 
structive ideas. A general economic survey of the kingdom was 
projected in the last years of his life, but never completed, owing 
to his failing strength. The scheme included a registration of 
all the lands throughout the realm, and a rearrangement of the 
taxes upon a basis less feudal, we may believe, in its nature."" In 
the spring of 1137, when Louis the Young was making ready for 
his pilgrimage into Aquitaine, a royal decree provided for a 
general tax.^ Such an act was more than feudal in character.* 

' See the letter of Louis VI. to Eudes, chatelain of Beauvais. — Ordonn., 
XL, 177. 

* II (Louis le Gros) tente la grande operation du cadastre de tout le terri- 
toire appartenant a la courorfne. Des arpenteurs et des mesureurs de terras 
sont commissioniies pour relever les contenances des differents fiefs, afin 
d'appliquer a chacun, suivant son revenu, une equitable repartition du cens. 
On voit comment deja apparaissent ces premieres lueurs d'administration 
financi&re, qui, bientot, de la commune vont passer a I'^lfctat. M. le Baron 
de Nervo. — Les Finances frant^aises sous Vancienne Monarchie, la Republique, le 
Consulat et V Empire. 3 vols. Paris, 1863, Vol. I., p. 8. 

3 Igitur imminente destinatae sibi virginis ductione, pater Ludovicus itineri 
necessaria praeparat, ut et tanta res cito effectui mancipetur, elaborat. Im- 
perialis itaque edicti taxatione ubique publicata, militum agmina non parva 
properanter conveniunt, et ad ampliationem regii comitatus, urbes et oppida 
suorum multitudinem habitatorum emittunt. — Ex Chronica Matiriniacensi, H. F., 
XIL,83. 

4 The general tax imposed by Louis VII. at Suger's suggestion (H. F., 
XII., 295) is commonly regarded as the first fiscal levy in 223 years not of a 
feudal nature (Clamageran, I., 193), although Vuitry (I., 390) holds that that 
also was a sort of feudal aid. — Consult Luchaire, Inst. Man., I., 126-7, ^nd 
notes. See note 3, p. 58. 

57 



58 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

Was this act inspired by the Domesday Survey of William the 
Conqueror ? There is nothing to indicate it ; but the idea is sug- 
gestive. Suger's early connection with ecclesiastical administration 
in Normandy, and his intimacy with Henry I., to my mind, account 
for this glimmer of a new regime, and we know that the Domes- 
day Survey owed its principle to a Norman source.' 

Such a scheme as Louis VI. projected, if he had lived to carry 
it into effect, would certainly have exalted the monarchy by 
diminishing the independence of the separate feudal governments, 
much the same as the danegeld in England, by its uniformity 
and the extent of its application, contributed to political unity ."^ 
As it was, its importance cannot escape attention. It wis a 
genuinely creative piece of statesmanship, for the last tax, 
approaching a general tax in character, in France, up to 
the time of Louis VI. had been in 924 — the tribute paid to 
the Northmen. 3 It was, therefore the first fiscal project in 
over two centuries not of a feudal character. In the succeed- 
ing interval the right of the feudal lord had been established 
and extended. In the eleventh century there was a time 
when little distinction was made between the revenues of the 
crown and the king's private purse." Taxation as a public 

'Stubbs, Const. Hist, of England, I., 298. 

2 Cf. Green, Making of England, 414 ; Clamageran, I., 193. 

3 Vuitry, I., 479. The usual statement is that the tax of 924 was the last 
general tax levied in France, the inference being that it applied to the entire 
realm of Charles the Simple. As a matter of fact, the tax was laid upon 
Fraticia, because of the revolt of Robert, son of Robert le Fort and brother of 
Odo of Paris, and was not general at all. See Marion, De Noi-manorum Ducum 
cum Capelianis pacta ruptaque societate, Paris, 1892, p. 8; and Lippert, Geschichte 
des Westfrankischen Reiches unter Konig Rudolf, Leipzig, 1885, p. 38. This 
confusion of France, in the wider significance, and Francia has arisen, I think, 
from the careless use of the Guizot translation of Frodoard, which is mis- 
leading, instead of, 'the original Latin version. Francia is there translated 
" France," and a careless reading of the statement there made might lead a 
writer, as it has Clamageran (L 193), and Vuitry (I. 479), into error. On the 
use of the term Francia, see Freeman's Norman Conquest I., appendix I., 
especially p. 684. 

4 1 question whether " Le roi vivait des ses revenus comme un simple 
seigneur." — Boutaric, Hist, de Saint Louis et V Alfonse de Poitiers. Quoted in 
Muntchretien, introd. li., note 2. 



FEUDAL AND PUBLIC ECONOMY. 59 

measure disappeared, or rather, was converted into the number- 
less feudal exactions of the Middle Ages.' But the French 
monarchy was something more than the "great fief" of Mezeray. 
The droit de regale was a prerogative approaching monarchial 
authority^ and not circumscribed by the limits of the lie de 
France. "The church throughout the most of northern and 
central France was the direct tenant of the crown in temporal 
matters. On the vacancy of a bishopric or of a royal abbey, the 
king, as the rightful overlord assumed full administration of such 
rights and possessions of the see as were not distinctively ecclesi- 
astical. . . . This right was an effective means of filling the royal 
treasury, and even more advantageous to the monarchy as afford- 
ing political power. The return every few years of the temporalia 
of these great sees to the royal control, enabled the king to resist 
the encroachments of the neighboring vassals on the ecclesiastical 
fiefs ; and for a time at least, to use the whole force of a bishop- 
ric, in addition to his own proper resources, against any lay sub- 
ject whom he might wish to curb."^ Louis le Gros was a careful 
guardian of the crown's regalian privileges,'* for political and 
financial reasons alike, although in the cautious working out of 
his policy of intensive development he made little effort to extend 
the right. In Normandy, Anjou and Maine the right fell to the 
crown with the forfeiture of those fiefs by King John ; while in 
Aquitaine and Brittany the right was enjoyed by the dukes in 
their fiefs. But in the ecclesiastical provinces of . Sens and 
Rheims, in Burgundy, Champagne, Nevers, Auxerre, Tonnerre 

' Les impots publics dtaient presque enti&remept tombes en desuetude, et 
les ressources du tresor etaient reduites aux revenus des domaines royaute, aux 
dons gratuits et a des services reels et personnels." — Tardif, I., VIII., Notice 
priliminaire. Cf. H. F., XIV., Introd. xxxvii. 

2 This is a mooted point, however. M. Langlois {Le Rigne de Phillippe III. le 
Hardi) contests the attitude of M. Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 124-8. But the 
admirable discussion of M. Pfister, Le Regne de Robert le Pieiix, Paris, 1885, 
Livre II., chap, v., in my opinion, fully vindicates the ro3^al character of the 
regale. On the origin of the regale consult Phillips, Der Ur sprung des Rega- 
lienrechts in Fratikreich, Halle, 1 870. 

3 Walker, pp. 97-99. 

* Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 263. 



6o DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

and Auvergne the droit de regale was a valuable source of fiscal 
and political power to the crown.' 

Owing to the alienations and donations of Louis' predecessors, 
the royal receipts had became seriously impaired,^ so that the 
kings, weak as they were, were sometimes constrained to exercise 
the hazardous right of confiscation.^ Although Louis VI. did 
not scruple to wrest money from the Jews,'* he sought to secure a 
more dignified income than festival gifts,^ and market dues.^ 
The ordonnances of his reign show how solicitous he was to pro- 
mote commerce and foster agriculture.^ A large number of 
charters of exemptions, and grants of privilege attest his interest 
in public economy.® Undoubtedly Suger was the inspiring cause 
of such measures. No part of the policy of Louis VI. is less his 
own than that pertaining to finance. He simply applied in 
extenso what his minister had already adopted in the estates of 
St. Denis.' These were organized by Suger under a regime 
calculated to produce the best results. In all the domains of the 
abbey, the prevots and their subordinates were obliged to trans- 
mit exact accounts of the condition of affairs." Suger thus had 

'Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 124-5. 

='Tardif, I., viii. H. F., XL.Intr. cxli. 

3Vuitry I., 314. Louis VI. and Louis VIL did exercise the right of con- 
fiscation, but always with reference to the small vassals of the royal domain 
The confiscation of Normandy by Philip Augustus was really a landmark in 
feudal law. See Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 22, note 2. 

*Abelard (de Calamitatibus, H. F., XIV., 292) complains "gravioribus 
exactionibus monachos ipsos quam tributaries Judaeos exagitabat" (Louis VI.). 
On the king's treatment of the Jews, see Luchaire, Manuel, 582-3 ; Brussel, 
Bk. II., ch. 39. Philip Augustus enumerated them in the budget (1206), 
according to Brussel, I., 59. Cf. Luchaire, Manuel, 583. 

5 H. F., XV., 147. 

* Clamegeran, I., 206, n. 

^ Ordonnances, t. XL, p. 183. 

8 Luchaire, ^««a/fj, Nos. 58, 162, 167, 196,244, 271, 273, 277, 321, 516, 
551. 557. 574. 586, 587, 601, 607, 608, 611, 612. 

9 Huguenin, 34. 

'° Huguenin, 33. On page 26, note 2, M. Huguenin gives an actual 
instance — the roll of Mathieu le Beau, of the French Vexin : "Ego Matthaeus 
Bellus, homo ligius existens S. Dionisii et ejus abbatis, rogatu D. Sugerii abbatis 
et totius conventus omnes feodos meos quos de S. Dionisio, in propriam possideo, 



FEUDAL AND PUBLIC ECONOMY. 6 1 

what really was a budget, the enlarged lines of which afterwards, 
when he was regent under Louis VII., included the public 
domain. The interrupted survey of Louis VI. probably had its 
inception here ; but it required two generations for the new 
measures to commend themselves to the royal treasury.'' 

In addition to such measures, Louis VI. coined a new right 
for the king — that of pariages, or sharings.^ These were con- 
tracts by which the king was associated with a local seigneur in 
the government of his demesne, thereby extending the king's 
direct influence over towns pertaining to a particular seigneur. 
Louis VI. created six such establishments, in Soisi, Montchauvet, 
Verrines, Boulai, Fosse des Champeaux a Paris and Fontenai.^ 
In so doing, as in the case of the bailiffs, he simply anticipated 
Philip Augustus,"* who extended Louis' associative government 
into points in Burgundy, Bourbon, Sancerre, Dreux, the bishoprics 
of Auxerre, Laon, Beauvais and elsewhere. The advantage of 
this copartnership was greater to the crown than to the local 
lord. The latter purchased royal protection by a partial sacrifice 
of independence and income. " Naturally they were usually 
resorted to by ecclesiastical establishments ; but sharings between 
the king and lay vassals were not unknown. Though the small 
holder obtained protection and often an increase of privileges, 
by dividing the benefits of his fief with the king, the gain to the 
monarchy was even more. The partition was usually made on the 
basis of an equal division of the income, save that distinctively 
churchly impositions like tithes and certain portions of the church 

et quos coeteri mei feodati, computavi nullum praetermittens," etc. (1125). — 
Cartul. de Saint Denis, t. I., p. 234. 

^ Les travaux administratifs de Suger auront pour premier theatre le 
temporel m^me de son abbaye ; mais ils ne nous offriront pas moins un sujet 
d'observations interessantes, puisque nous les verrons en suite servir de modele 
pour I'administration m6me du royaume. — Huguenin, 32. 

^"C'est Louis le Gros qui fonda, sur ce point comme sur tant d'autres, la 
tradition monarchique." — Luchaire, Anjiales, Introd., cxcvii. See also 
Manuel, 384, 415. 

3 Luchaire, Annales, Nos. 355, 403, 457, 492, 572, 597. On the character, 
importance and extension of the pariages, see Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 195- 
201. 

4 Walker, 123. 



62 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

lands or buildings, were reserved as the exclusive property of 
religious establishments. The administration was in the hands 
of officers chosen jointly by the monarch and the sharer, or, if not 
so chosen, bound by oath to each of the contracting parties. It 
is easy to see how such an arrangement would inure to the profit 
of a strong monarch, allowing him, as it did, to have control of 
the local administration of the fief and to use its fortifications in 
the interest of the crown.'" 
* Walker, 122-3. 



CHAPTER VI. 
RELATION OF LOUIS VI. TO THE CHURCH. 

The fact that the reign of Louis VI. fell in the years imme- 
diately following the pontificate of Gregory VII., when the Clugny 
reform movement was at its height, suggests the query. What 
was the attitude of Louis towards the Church and the Holy 
See ? The answer is of consequence in virtue of the light cast 
upon the throne and its power. 

In the process of feudalization to which all institutions suc- 
cumbed in greater or less degree, the church had not escaped. 
The life all round it was feudal, and there was thus a gradual 
infiltration into the church of feudalizing elements. The church 
in Gaul had suffered under the precarious condition of the govern- 
ment following the division of the empire. The decline, too, 
was aggravated by the Norman incursions. The king, upon 
whom hitherto the exercise of electoral power in the bishoprics 
had depended, was obliged to divide with the lords. Feudal 
pretensions invaded episcopal seats. In many dioceses count or 
viscount controlled the elections' and appropriated church reve- 
nues to personal uses. Yet although the Carlovingians and Cape- 
tians had to share their influence in episcopal elections with 
counts, or viscounts they contrived to retain a preponderant 
influence. The king's ecclesiastical sovereignty, conveyed in 
the term regale was never so divided as his political authority.^ 

^Revile des Quest. Hist.,^2,x^. 1894, p. 6. D Eglise au XP sihle dans la 
Gascogne. 

^This power, in the case of the king, no less than in that of the count, 
extended beyond the role which ecclesiastical theory allowed, according to 
which the king was the protector, not the proprietor of the church and its prop- 
erty. But in spite of protest the king continued to direct affairs- (with the 
qualifications mentioned on pp. 59-6°-) R^'^- ^'^■^ Qiiest. Hist., Jan. 1894, p. 296. 
Review of Imbart de la Tour's " Les Elections episcopates dans rEglise de France 

63 



64 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY, 

Some remnants of supremacy remained in localities not forming 
a portion of the royal domain, which were used to the advantage 
of the central power/ We have seen before this, what financial 
advantages regalian rights afforded the crown ; the political 
advantage was no less effective. "The right of regalia carried 
with it the privilege of appointing to the benefices ordinarily in 
the gift of the bishop ; thus allowing the king to fill these terri- 
tories, often in the heart of the lay fiefs, with his partisans.'" 
This extended also to the choice of the heads of numerous abbeys, 
which the interest of protection from the local nobles bound to the 
crown, and so emphasized the power of the crown in lay lands.^ 
The king thus had a measure of power transcending his ordinary 
authority. In the time of Louis le Gros the circle of regalian 
influence was confined to northern and central France — the epis- 
copate of Rheims, the province of Sens, Bourges, Champagne, 
Bourgogne, Nivernais, including Auxerre and Tonnerre, and 
Auvergne. In Normandy, in fiefs of the house of Anjou, in 
Flanders, Brittany, Toulouse, and the feudal group of the south, 
regalian rights fell to the crown'' only by conquest or other annexa- 

du IX^ au XII^ sitcles". The right, however, was subject to important varia- 
tions. Before the Gregorian reform it was entire, wherever held. From that 
time it became more qualified, but through the partial failure of the reform, it was 
never seriously impaired. (See Luchaire, Manuel, § 276.) The letter of Suger, 
while regent (Duchesne, IV., 498), to the church of Chartres, is particularly 
clear in defining the regale : Sugerius Dei gratia B. Dionysii abbas, Capitulo 
Carnotensi, Roberto scilicet decano, et aliis, salutem et dilectionem. Quod 
unanimiter et communi pace pontificem vobis domnum Gostenum archidiaconum 

elegistis, valde nobis placet Nos autem, quantum ex parte domini regis 

cujus vices agimus, facere habemus, huic election! libenter assensum prsebemus. 
De regalibus vero, sicut in curia Dominorum Regum Francorum mos antiquus 
fuisse dinoscitur, cum episcopus consecratus et in palatinum ex more canonico 
fuerit introductus, tunc reddentur omnia. Hie est enim redditionis ordo et 
consuetudo, ut, sicut diximus, in palatio statutus, regi et regno fidelitatem faciat, 
et sic, demum regalia recipiat, 

' Clamageran, I., 276. Cf. H. F., XIV., liii. 

'Walker, 99. 

3 For Louis VI. 's management of the royal abbeys see Luchaire, Annales, 
Introd., pp. cliv-vi. 

''Ibid., cviii-cxi. Brussel, I., 295-309. 

Louis VI. allowed the privilege of election to remain to the bishoprics and 



RELATION OF LOUIS VI. TO THE CHURCH. 65 

tions. Louis was jealous of the regalia' and kept a watchful eye 
upon appointments in bishopric or abbey.^ In respect of this 
policy, Louis VI. predetermined the larger conduct of Philip 
Augustus. 3 Such rights, permeating where else the king could 
not enter, gave a solidity to the royal power not afforded in 
any other way. 

It was inevitable where Church and State were so inti- 
mately connected, that there should be conflict between the 
ecclesiastical and secular powers ; but in spite of the anathemas 
of the church, the regale triumphed."* In case of such union, the 
truest political science demanded that the state be paramount.^ 
The idea of the state, as the idea of the nation, were both nascent 

abbeys in Aquitaine and Poitiers. This was just before his death. The act 
sets forth in clear style the duties of royal power to the church : Regiae majes- 
tatis est, ecclesiarum quieti pia sollicitudine providere ; et ex officio susceptse a 
Domino pietatis earum libertatem tueri, et ab hostium seu malignantium incursi- 
bus defensare. Ea propter petitionibus vestris, communicato praesente episco- 
porum abbatuum et procerum nostrorum consilio, assentienti Ludovico filio 
nostro jam in regem sublimato, duximus annuemdum, et in sede Burdegalensi 
et in praenominatis episcopalibus sedibus, abbatiisque ejusdem provinciae quae, 
defuncto illustri Aquitanorum duce et comite Pictavis Guillelmo, per filiam 
ipsius Alienordim jam dicto filio nostro Ludovico forte matrimonii cedit, in 
episcoporum et abbatuum suorum electionibus canonicam omnino concedimus 
libertatem absque homini, juvamenti seu fidei per manum datae, obligatione. 
.... Hoc quoque adjicientes, ut omnes ecclesiae infra denominatam provin- 
ciam constitutae, praedia, possessiones ad ipsas jure pertinentia, secundum 
privilegia et justitias et bonas consuetudines suas, habeant et possideant illibita. 
quin ecclesiis ipsis universis et earum ministris, cum possessionibus suis, can- 
onicam in omnibus concedimus libertatem. — Brussel, I., 286. 

^ " In dem hohen Masse, wie Ludwig dem Klerus gegeniiber seine Pflichten 
als Schutzherr wahrnahm und demselben zahlreiche Beweise der Gunst gab, 
wahrte er streng die ihm zustehenden kirchlichen Rechte, besonders die sich 
auf die Regalien, sowie auf Wahl und Bestatigung der Bischofe und Abte 
beziehenden."- — ^Hirsch, Studien zur Geschichte Konig Ludwigs VII., p. 14. 

2 See the cases, Luchaire, Annales, Introd., clxix-clxx. 

3 Luchaire, Ibid., Introd. p. clvi. 
^ Clamageran, I., 290. 

S" The State is the public power, offensive and defensive, both at home 
and abroad. In the life of the State and of states, authority is thus the essen- 
tial thing Only the State has the duty or the right to be the authority in 

this sense. Wherever justice, property, society, wherever even the church, the 



66 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

potentialities in France in the twelfth century, but the royal atti- 
tude of Louis was a valuable preparative to that discovery. When 
pontifical authority did not invade the palace, or oppose the ends 
of government, he was a ready supporter of Rome;' but he 
believed that France's interests were paramount. 

This is made manifest in an occurrence of the year 1 1 14. The 
diocese of Noyon was situated in that penumbral region between 
France and the empire. It was French in sentiment, while Tournai, 
in the same ecclesiastical department, inclined towards Germany. 
In 1 1 14, on the death of the bishop, the two sections, each 
with its own candidate, struggled for the mastery. Pascal II. was 
favorable to a division of the diocese ; but such a separation would 
deliver to Flanders and the county of Hainaut, and, perhaps, 
to the Empire, an area hitherto subject to the regalian juris- 
diction of the king of France. Pascal went so far as to give 
to Tournai a special bishop, but Calixtus II., in 1 121, owing to the 
strenuous efforts of Louis, reunited Tournai and Noyon.* The 
same question, in reverse manner, occurred again in 11 24 when 
the pope sought to unite the bishophic of Arras to that of Cam- 
brai. Again Louis VI. interposed and forced the pope to main- 
tain Arras in his exclusive control. The union, if consummated, 
would have reduced the territory penetrated by the regale, and 
possible also have been a source of conflict with the Empire.^ 
Motives of expediency constrained each party not to go to 
extremes. Necessity constrained Louis not to be too aggressive, 
and without doubt the support of the crown of France, indirect 
as it was, was of aid to the pope in his protracted struggle 

people, or the community, come into the position of authority, the nature of the 
State is either not yet discovered or lost in degeneracy." — Droysen, Principles 
of History (Andrews' translation), p. 42. 

'In 1 1 12 Louis VI. writes to the pope : Ego Ludovicus .... praemuni- 
tus, dignum ac valde necessarium duximus, ut quando pontificalis auctoritas verbi 
gratia non praevalet, nostra potentia subministret ; et quod perfidorum violentia 
Deo militantibus subtrahitur nostre majestatis formidine ad ultimum reformetur, 
— Mabillon, 642. 

' See Luchaire, Annates, No. 172, and Introd. cxxv.-cxxix. The confirma- 
tion of Calixtus is in Robert's Bullaire, No. 263. Eugenius III. later (1146) 
divided the diocese. (Luchaire, Manuel, 40, note.) 

3 On these two cases, see Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II. 263-4 ^^^ notes. 



RELATION OF LOUIS VI. TO THE CHURCH. 67 

with the empire.' The pope dared not go to extremes lest the 
conflict between the papacy and the empire be repeated in Gaul.^ 

The history of royal justice under Louis VI., so far as the rela- 
tions of the court of the king to ecclesiastical matters is con- 
cerned, is one of great obscurity. There is no reason to believe, 
however, that in asserting the competence of his court over 
things pertaining to the church he abated his claims. 3 Louis 
adhered to — even strengthened — whatever legal or customary 

' Aside from the dynastic tie wliich bound tlie emperor to the foe of the 
French king, between the two powers east and west of the Rhine, there could 
not be any pacific feeling. The French king enjoyed in comparative security 
the right for which the emperor was struggling and which he was obliged 
partially to surrender by the Concordat of Worms (1122). This jealousy was 
aggravated, too, because French influence had been exerted in favor of the 
pope, the emperor's mortal enemy, although in the nature of things Louis VI. 
could derive no advantage from his conduct, even though Calixtus II. were his 
uncle. " Das Schisma welches Heinrich vor drei Jahren erneuert hatte, war ein 
trauriger Anachronismus gewasen, dessen Wirkungen er selbst iibel genug 
empf and ; das Abendland ertrug keinen Papst mehr, der sich lediglich auf die 
Macht des Kaisers stUtzte. Darauf beruhte zuletzt der vollstandige Sieg des 
Calixt, eine wie bedeutende Hiilfe ihm auch sein koniglicher Neffe in Frank- 
reich gewahrt hatte. Es lag nur in der Natur der Dinge dass sich Konig 
Ludwig fiir die geleisteten Dienste schlecht belohnt glaubte, als der Pabst nicht 
mehr in alle seine Forderungen willigte, und dass dieser dagegen sich solchen 
Undank wenig zu Hertzen nahm. Er woUte so wenig ein Vassall Frankreichs, 
wie des deutchen Kaisers, sondern das freie Oberhaupt der Kirche sein — und 
war es." — Giesebrecht, III., 930. 

'Ives of Chartres writes (11 13) : Quod ergo hactenus cum pace et utili- 
tate ecclesiae observatum est, humiliter petimus ut de coetero observatur, et 
regni Francorum pax et sumini sacerdotii nulla subreptione dissolvatur. Quod 
idcirco praelibamus quia audivimus clericos Tornacenses ad apostolicam sedem 
venisse, petituros ut apostolica proeceptione proprium possint habere episcopum, 
et Noviomensis ecclesiae frustrare privilegium. Quod ne fiat sicut filii et fideles 
rogamus et consulimus ; . . . . ne hac occasione schisma quod est in Germanico 
regno adversus sedem apostolicam in Galliarum regno suscitetis .... Tornacen- 
sibus non esse dandum proprium episcopum, ne in offen sam regis Francorum 
incurrat.— H. F., XV., 160. 

3 The principle of the superiority of the justice of the state over that of the 
church is clearly set forth in the act of partition of the banlieue between Louis 
VI. and the bishop of Paris (1112-1116). See Luchaire, Annates, Introd. 
clviii., and No. 218 ; Tardif, No. 345 ; Guerard, Cartul. de Notre-Dame de Paris, 
L, 252. 



68 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

prerogatives attended the king's office. The church, while quite 
willing in case of need to be plaintiff in the royal court, had before 
Louis' time assumed, with admirable inconsistency, to try in its 
own courts all cases wherein an ecclesiastic was the defendant.' 
This invasion of the competence of the king's court by the 
hierarchy, while never reaching the point attained by the seign- 
eurial power,' was quite general in the later eleventh century — 
that is to say, in the times of the magnificent papal pretensions 
of Gregory VII. In 1093 Ives of Chartres, the great advocate of 
the Clugny reform, replied to a summons of the royal court, — 
"/« ecclesia,si ecclesiastica sunt negotia; vel in curia, si sunt curi- 
alia,'" — language guarded enough for any reservation he might 
choose to make.3 Filled with cloud-capped ideas of the emi- 
nence of the church, the bishop of Chartres sought to make the 
prevots of his diocese'* address themselves to Rome instead of 
appealing, as they naturally did, to the justice of the king.^ But 
he was to live to learn that the little finger of Louis VI. was as 
thick as his father's thigh. He could not dispose of a sum- 
mons of Louis VI. by a stroke of the pen. In 11 14 a chev- 
alier of Beauvais was killed, through the instigation of a canon. 
The cathedral chapter at once took the matter in hand, and 
denied the cognizance of the royal tribunal, although the 
action was criminal, on the ground that the chapter alone was 
competent to try its members. In this the canons were sus- 
tained by Ives, the bishop of Chartres, who at the same time 

'Luchaire, Manuel, 557. 

' Pardessus, 4, 5. 

3 See Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 295. There are two monographs pertaining 
to this subject : Sieber, BiscJiof Ivo von Chartres und seine Stellung zu den kir- 
chenpolitische,n Fragen seine Zeit; Theil, Die politische Thatigkeit des Abtes 
Bernhard von Clairvaux. 

^ " Accusavit (Ivo) enim nos " writes one of the prevots, " dicens quod regem 
adissemus, regem in rebus ecclesiae nostrae manum mittere fecissemus. Itaque 
orasse ad vestrum auxilium et consilium confugisse nunc nobis nocet. Nunc 
enim nobis jus et negavit, et negat, et Romam invito nos trahit et invitat." — 
Bibl. de VEcole des Chartes, 1855 ; L. Merlet, Lettres de Ivo de Chartres, pp. 449- 
450. Quoted in Luchaire, Inst. Mon., I., 295, note 2. 

s The lesser clergy were far more in consonance with the policy of the 
crown than high prelates. 



RELATION OF LOUIS VI. TO THE CHURCH. 69 

indulged in the melancholy reflection that if the chapter 
renounced its competence, it violated the canon law; while if it 
refused, it incurred the wrath of the king {si audientiam regalis 
mriae respuitis, regent offenditis). Louis VI. had the murderer 
arrested ; the clerical party replied by laying Beauvais under 
interdict.' We are ignorant of the issue of the struggle ; the 
canon may have escaped severe punishment, owing to the protrac- 
tion of the struggle ; * or the chapter may have purchased per- 
mission to try the cause, as in the case of Gaudri, the bishop of 
Laon.3 In the light of Louis' policy, however, it is hard to 
believe that the crown retreated from its position. 

The period between 11 26 and 1135 is signalized by the 
further struggle of Louis with the clergy of reform. Louis 
VI. had no intention of abandoning to papal control a pre- 
rogative so valuable as that of the regale. Rome and the 
reforming party had triumphed at Rheims in 1106," but the 
responsibility of government was then not. all Louis' own. As 
king, Louis was determined to control the regale in spite of the 
protests of Rome. Aside from the advantage to the crown from 
the right of investiture in lay fiefs, the crown had been accustomed 
to use the church in other capacities. Hence he regarded the new- 
propaganda as inimical to the interests of monarchy. The vice of 
feudalism was its separativeness. Invest^iture was the only 
means of contact which the king had with many fiefs. Louis was 

'See H. F., XV., 168-70; Letters of Ives of Chartres, Nos, 137, 263, 264; 
Guibert de Nogent, I., chap, xvii.; Luchaire, Annales, No. 174; Inst. Mon., I., 
297-8; Guizot, Civilization in France, Course IV., Lect. a^; Revue Hist. (1890), 
Vol. XLII., p. 87 ; Langlois, Les Origines du Parlenient de Paris.. 

* This is the hypothesis of M. Guizot. 

3 In mo Gerard de Quierzi was assassinated by accomplices of Gaudri, 
bishop of Laon, then at Rome. The royal pr^vot in the city at once called 
upon the bourgeois, burned the houses of the conspirators, and drove them out 
of the city. The king knowing that the bishop was the instigator of the murder, con- 
fiscated his property and forbade him his episcopal duties. Gaudri, meanwhile, 
had returned from Rome with letters of absolution from the pope. Louis, however, 
persisted in his attitude, and Gaudri was only allowed to assume his place on 
payment of money. — Annales, No. 93; H. F., XIL, 246-9. Cf. No. 518. 

^Luchaire, Annales, clvi. ff.; Imbart de la Tour, Les Elections episcopates, 
PP- 356-7. 



7° DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

not an enemy of reform. His attitude in this matter has been 
misunderstood. He has been accused of deliberate persecution 
of the church ; ^ whereas his sole purpose was to establish the 
precedence of the state in matters pertaining to church and state.* 
Effective reform had to proceed from the government ; this Louis 
VI. saw;, he could not abandon the cardinal principles of his pol- 
icy. 3 Fortunately Suger, as Stephen de Garland before him, was 
wise enough to see the wisdom of this course. Although he 
refused to wear a secular title, Suger nevertheless preserved in 
his spiritual discipline an active participation in temporal affairs. 
He was no less a man of the church for that he had a vivid inter- 
est in things of the world; he saw with rare insight the necessity 
of cooperation between the two greatest forces of the time. 

The moral situation between the king and the party of reform 
was sometimes serious.'* Against the monarchy was the clergy of 
the Ile-de-France, with the order of Citeaux, and the foremost 
advocate of church authority in Europe, Bernard of Clairvaux. 

' Combes, 22. St. Bernard called him " a second Herod." — H. F., XV., 548. 

2 Louis VI. proved the sincerity of his intentions by taking Clugny under 
special protection. — Luchaire, Annates, No. 276. 

3 Louis le Gros in granting a charter to the church of St. Cornelius, at 
Compiegne, felt it necessary to accompany the privileges bestowed with a 
restriction worded as though it were a novelty, to the effect that those in holy 
orders, connected with the foundation, should have no wives — a condition 
which shows how little confidence existed in the mind of the sagacious prince 
as to the efhcacy of the canons so pretentiously promulgated. " Ut clerici ejusdem 
ecclesiae sicut usque modo vixerunt permaneant ; hoc tamen praecipimus ut 
presbyteri, diaconi,subdiaconi, nulla tenus deinceps uxores concubinas habeant ; 
cseteri vero cujuscumque ordinis clerici propter fornicationem,licentiam habeant 
ducendi uxores." — DuCange, Concubina. Cited in Lea, Hist. Sacerdotal Cel- 
ibacy, p. 270. " The correspondence of Ives of Chartres is a sufficient confes- 
sion of the utter futility of the ceaseless exertions which for half a century the 
church had been making to enforce her discipline." Lea, p. 263. See Letters, 
Nos. 200, 218, 277. 

■* See the conflict of Louis VI. with the a,rchbishop of Sens (Luchaire, 
Annales, No. 448); with the bishop of Paris {Ibid., Nos. 424, 427-8, 439, 465); with 
Hildebert of Tours {Ibid., Nos. 367, 400, 426, 432, 460, 473). On the contest 
over investitures, with Pascal II. consult Acad, des Inscript., VI., 565 (1819). A 
detailed account of Louis VI. 's relations with the episcopate is in Luchaire, 
Annales, Introd., pp. cliii-clxxviii. 



RELATION OF LOUIS VL TO THE CHURCH. 71 

The terrible struggle between the king and the bishop of Paris 
ended in the capitulation of the partisans of the Clugny propa- 
ganda, while that with Hildebert of Tours ended in the complete • 
surrender of Hildebert. When it was at last understood that the 
royal power would brook no reduction of its authority, conveyed 
either in law or precedent, church and state profited alike. 
Louis VI. 's wise policy of moderation when contrasted with the 
drastic policy of Henry HI. in Germany,' spared France the con- 
flict which sundered the Empire. The question of investiture — 
the cardinal principle of the Clugny reform — never reached the 
stupendous proportions in France that it attained in Germany 
and Italy, or even in England. 

The silence of the French chronicles regarding the matter 
is significant. Neither in charters, nor in pontifical letters, 
nor in the writers of the period, is there allusion to any 
agreement concluded between the monarchy and the papacy, 
like the Concordat of Worms (11 2 2) in Germany, or the settle- 
ment made between the English king and the pope in 1107. 
The council of Rheims (October 20, 11 19) under Calixtus II. was 
the last synod held in France in which the question of investi- 
ture was agitated.* Calixtus was a violent fanatic and intended 
to promulgate a general interdict, but the temper of the 
assembly obliged him to modify the decree.^ It is probable that 
from this time forth the kings ceased gradually to give investi- 
ture by ring and crosier before consecration, without submitting 
to this concession by official declaration or public act. The 
truth is that from the reign of Louis VI. it can be said that the 
crown ceased to insist on its direct right of nomination allowing 
a measure of local liberty in the election of bishops.'' The king 
trusted the Galilean clergy, and on the whole their sentiments of 
loyalty and independence warranted that trust.^ 

' See this dissertation, introd., p. 8. 

= On this council consult Freeman's Norman Conquest, V. 189-91, or Robert 
Calixte II., ch. vi. 

slmbart de la Tour. — Les Elections episcopates, p. 398 and note i. 

''Ibid., p. 399. 

SThus in 1137 Louis granted liberty of episcopal elections to the churches 



72 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

That the reconciliation between the king and the church party 
was real and complete,' an event of the year 1130 furnishes 
proof. After the death of Honorius II. the Christian world 
was divided in the question whether the claims of Innocent II. 
or those of Anacletus should have preferment. Louis VI. 
convened a council at Etampes. Among the prelates came 
St. Bernard and Hildebert the penitent archbishop of Tours. 
The ki-ng appealed to Bernard to decide, for he had but to 
open his mouth and the Spirit gave him utterance.^ His 
decision given in favor of Innocent was considered the judgment 
of God. In the nature of things, Louis secured no direct results 
at this time. Whatever important aid the king of France had 
given Innocent, the pope was willing to be a vassal of the 
king of France as little as of the emperor. He wanted to be 
the free head of the church, and he was, but the indirect effect 
to France, in the prestige given the monarchy, in the eyes of 
Europe, was not inconsiderable, Germany and England fol- 
lowed France and also recognized Innocent II. as pope. 

Meanwhile the king and his minister had begun the work 

/ of reforming the monasteries. Corruption and debauchery 

ruled, even in St. Denis, ^ and also in its priory of Argen- 

of Aquitaine, but the privilege was not accorded at the demand of the pope nor 
was it owing even to the initiative of local seigneurs. Luchaire, Annales,l>io. 581. 

' Stephen, the bishop of Paris, attended Louis VI., in his last hours. — 
Suger, 129. 

*"Aperuit os suum et Spiritus Sanctus implevit illud." — Ex vita sancti 
Bernardi,'ii.¥.,XlY., 364. On this schism see Suger, 118 ; Chron. Maurin, 
H. F., XII., 79 ; E,x actis sanctorum et illustrium virorum gestis, H. F., XIV., 
256. Luchaire, Annates, No. 460, has a valuable note. 

sAntiqua religio non parum in eodem monasterio refriguerat, exteriores 
quoque possessiones paulatim diminutae erant, sed et nonnulla sinistrae famae 
de eisdem virginibus dicebantur. Unde multum contristatus idem pontifex 
.... consilio et auctoritate domini Papae Innocentii, dominique Renaldi 
Remorum archiepiscopi, Ludovici quoque regis Francorum, ad quem eadem 
ecclesiae proprie pertinere dicebatur, omnes pariter illas sanctimoniales ex ilia 
ejecit. — H. F., XIV., 348, Gesta Bartholomaei Laudunensis episcopi. Cf. Letter 
of Louis VI. Gall. Christ. IX., col. 192. 

In ecclesia sancti Dionysii, Par'siensis diocesis, reformatur religio per 
industriam et bonum propositum Sugerii, ejusdem loci abbatis. Nam per negli- 



RELATION OF LOUIS VL TO THE CHURCH. 73 

teuil.' Suger effectively renovated many places," not only reform- 
ing the moral life of the monks, but their temporal condition as 
well. In the priories of St. Denis he revised the method of govern- 
ment, requiring ecclesiastical prevots to have a knowledge of the 
law, a qualification hitherto unheard of. He induced the king 
to relieve the inhabitants of the ville of St. Denis of the right of 
mortmain ; he redeemed the octrois, repurchased rights which 
had become alienated or usurped, and by planting vineyards and 
orchards, advanced the temporal interests of the people. 3 In 
the light of the numerous concessions made by Louis VI. tO' 
abbeys and churches," or the confirmation of donations or 
exemptions made by former kings,^ or by local seigneurs,^ it 
is difficult to think of him otherwise than as a patron of the 
church. But Louis VL was not prompted by humanitarian 
motives, in doing as he did, so much as by material results 
derived by the crown from the increased worth of his people,, 
else he would have abolished the barbarous right of spoil,^ by 

gentiam abbatuum et quorumdam illius ecclesiae monachorum regularis institute, 
ita ab eodem loco abjecta erat, quod, vix speciem vel habitum religionis prae- 
tendebant monachis." — Guil. de Nangis, p. 13. {Societe de VHistoire de France.) 

' Suger, 100. CEuvres de Suger (^Administration Abbatiale), Edition of Lecoy 
de la Marche, 160-I, and Eclaircissements, 441. 

= Luchaire, Atinales, Nos. 410, 413, 431, 433,519,565. Suger's own account 
of the reform of St. Denis is in Suger, 95-99. In. Chron. Maurin, H. F., XII., 
78 there is a good description of an investigation, showing the hostility of the 
monks. 

sHuguenin, 27-30. The charter of Louis VI. is in Duchesne, IV., 548, 
and in translation in Combes, Pieces Justificaiives, No. 4, p. 310. 

*Luchaire, Annates, Nos. 52, 58, 65, 66, 69, 86, 98,100, 107, 141,151, 163, 
171, 173, 193, 194, 196, 204, 206, 224, 225, 234, 241, 250, 271, 274, 278, 284, 286, 
289, 293, 329, 342, 354, 361, 363, 397, 419, 442, 453> 464, 477, 479, 482, 483, 495> 
498, 503, 517, 522, 535, 537, 538, 539, 54i. 543, 55o, 574, 59i, 592, 593, 596, 606, 
615, 616, 619-22, 631, 634, 636. 

SLuchaire, Annales, Nos. 140, 144, 148, 195, 292, 294, 302, 323, 324, 326, 
332, 350, 370, 501, 504, 507, 513, 532, 534, 536, 557, 633. 

^Ibid., Nos. loi, 104, 112, 115, 126, 232, 235 251, 283, 304, 306,319,320, 
329, 346, 347, 352, 354, 357, 364, 366, 368, 436, 447, 457, 458, 485, 514, 515, 528, 
548, 561, 599, 604, 635, 637, 638. 

7H. F., XV., 341. Luchaire, Manuel, 49. For the abolition of this abuse 
by Louis VII., see Inst. Mon., II., 66-7. 



74 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

which the king took to himself the goods and revenues of a 
deceased prelate. Motives of expediency to the king were more 
urgent than graces of charity were attractive.' 

'This is far from asserting, however, that Louis VI. was deficient in kindness 
of heart. On the contrary he was beloved by his friends and the common folk. 
Suger's account shows that the king was genuinely loved by his people: — Cum 
autem paulatim ad incolumitatem respiraret, quo potuit vehiculo prope Milidu- 
num ad fluvium Sequane, occurentibus et concurrentibus per viam ei obviam et 
Deo personam ejus commendantibus a castellis et vicis et relictis aratris devotis- 
simis populis quibus pacem conservaverat, etc. Suger, p. 127. 



CHAPTER VII. 

KING AND COMMUNES. ROYALTY AND THE POPULAR 

CLASSES. 

From the time of Louis VI. the emancipation of the serf ceases 
to be a religious sentiment of sporadic growth, and becomes a 
conscious policy of the crown'' that contributed to the increase of 
the royal power of the crown, in weakening feudal customs and 
in the consequent economic and social elevation of the people. 
The direct purpose of Louis, however, was not so much to 
elevate the serf as to humble the barons. Owing, to Suger's 
careful management, to the king power was more to be 
desired than riches. Yet Louis was far from displaying indiffer- 
ence to the acquisition of wealth. His cupidity was notorious. 
Nothing can equal the cynicism which he displayed in the sale 
of the charter of the commune of Laon,^ yet there must have 
been some promptings of heart in the act of Louis which permit- 
ted a freeman to marry a serf without losing his liberty .^ There 
were several ways in which manumission could be effected. Some- 
times the servile condition was ameliorated by converting men 
of the church into men of the king,"* or by placing ordinary serfs in 
the custody of the church.^ Sometimes an abbot, as that of St. 
Denis, was given the right of manumission without seeking royal 

' Luchaire, Mamiel, 380. 

2 See this dissertation, p. 88, n. 2, and on the avarice of Louis VI. in general. 
Luchaire Annates, Introd., pp. xxxv-xxxvi. 

sTardif, No. 392. 

* Luchaire, Annates, No. 41. 

5 Luchaire, Annates, 482. Ecclesiastical serfs were superior in point of 
advantage to cornmon serfs. (Luchaire, Manuet, 310.) Pascal IL in 11 14 
wrote to Galon of Paris : Neque enim aequum est ecclesiasticam familiam 
iisdem conditionibus coerceri, quibus servi saecularium hominum coercerentur. — 
Guerard, Cartut. de Notre-Danie de Paris, I. 223. On the other hand, royal 
serfs were still better off. (Luchaire, Manuet, 312). 

75 



76 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

authorization.' In St. Denis, St. Quentin, Soissons, Laon, and 
Orleans, the king also abolished the right of mortmain for all 
persons above seven years of age.^ However, in such emancipa- 
tions and exemptions, he had too much sagacity to go to 
extremes. The prohibition imposed upon enfranchised serfs of 
Laon by which they were prevented from evading military service 
by entering the ranks of the clergy, the chevalerie, or the bour- 
geois, is a clear enunciation of the principle that those indebted 
to the king are expected to do the king's business. ^ Thus it was 
no unusal thing to find men of low birth, in his reign, figuring 
not without honor in the host."* 

Louis endeavored to promote centers of population and agri- 
culture by means of assurances of protection, exemption for a 
term of years, and by franchises and liberties. This fact is 
attested by numerous ordinances. The cases of Touri,^ Beaune- 
la-Rolande,^ Augere Regis,^ and Etampes,^ which were repopu- 
lated and restored to a prosperous condition, are in point. 

The most notable instance of such restoration, however, is the 
case of Lorris, in Gatanais, at once one of the most fertile and 
yet the most harassed of the departments of the He de France. Its 
constitution was widely imitated in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 

' Luchaire, Annales, No. 144. Decrevimus etiam et statuimus, et regio 
edicto praecepimus, ut abbas et monachi sancti Dyonisii sociorum ejus plenam, 
habeant potestatem de servis et ancillis ecclesie emancipandis, et liberos faci- 
endi, consilio capituli sui, non requisite assensu vel consilio nostro. — Tardif, 
No. 347. Cf. Luchaire, Annales, No. 160, Abbey of Chalons-sur-Marne. 

2 Combes, 62, and notes. Louis VII. made the abolition entire. — Luchaire, 
Atudes sur les Actes de Louis VII. Paris, 1885. No. 15. 

3 Ego Ludovicus . . . notum fieri volumus, quod homines isti sive mulieres, 
quorum nomina subscribuntur, liberi servientes nostri sunt et licentur ad cleri- 
catum sive miliciam et ad communionem, sive contradictione.possuntassumi . . . 
Masculi vero, exceptis clericis, militibus aut in communione manentibus, nisi 
morbo vel senio graventur, expediciones nostras bannales debent, si submonitj 
fiunt. — Luchaire, Annales, Textes Inedits, p. 337-8. 

-tVuitry, I. 377, n. 3. 
5 Luchaire, Anjtales, No. 237. 
6 /^za'.. No. 165. 
T Ibid., 'Ho. 273. 

^ Ibid., No. 333. On this w^ork of Louis VI., see Luchaire, Annales, introd., 
clxxxii-cxci. More than fifty acts of privilege are recorded of him. 



KING, COMMUNES, ROYALTY AND POPULAR CLASSES. 77 

turies.^ Out of the depths of the feudal age the customs of 
Lorris reveal in a remarkable manner the purposes and teachings of 
a broader and more expansive era. The inhabitant of Lorris paid 
only the nominal sum of six derniers for his house and each acre 
of land which he possessed.^ In the radius of Etampes, Orleans 
and Melun, tallies, corvees, gifts and the like were abolished ^ and 
the peasant was entitled to enjoy without molestation the fruits of 
his labors/ Commerce was protected; purchase and sale were 
without restraint.^ The use of the oven in Lorris was free.* The 
tax on salt was reduced to one dernier pei; cart load.^ Military 
service was for a day at a time only.^ Allowance was made for a 
liberal process of law, in that fines formerly of sixty sous were 
reduced to five, and those of five sous were reduced to twelve 
derniers\^ Resort to law could be avoided by accommodation," the 
manifest intention being to make appeal to arms of rare recourse." 
But the assurances of civil liberty were perhaps the most phenom- 
enal provisions of these customs. Article 8 provided that no man 
of Lorris should be obliged to go out of the banlieue to plead before 
the king — an example of the principle of "justice at home" 
which paved the way for a provision which is certainly not remote 
from theright of habeas corpus. "No one," runs article 16, "shall 
be detained in prison if he can furnish bail for his appearance 
in court." 

The charter of Lorris found a ready acceptance elsewhere : 
in Corcelles-le-Roi, Saint Michel, Breteau near Auxerre, La 

' The history of the Customs of Lorris is shrouded in obscurity ; but the 
fact that Louis VL has the honor to have instituted them is no longer in doubt, | / 
although the date of their establishment is not known. No document of Louis 1 ^ 
VI. exists, but the customs are attested by a confirmation (1155) of Louis VII. 
(Luchaire, Catal., No. 351) and another by Philip Augustus in 1187. (Delisle, 
E,tudes sur les actes de Phillippe-Auguste, No. 187). See Prou : " Les Coutumes 
de Lorris et leur propagation aux XII^ et XIII ^ sihles" Nonvelle Revue hisio- 
riquede droit fran^ais et Stranger, NW\. (1884), pp. 139, 267, 441. Viollet Hist, 
du Droit franfais, lib. 

2 Art. I. * Art. 24. '° Art. 12. 

3Arts. 4and5. 7 Art. 26. "Art. 14. 

4 Art. 2. ^ Art. 3. 

s Arts. 16 and 17. 9 Art. 7. 



J 



78 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

Brosse in the diocese of Sens, in Le Moulinet and La Chapelle- 
le-Reine, in Barville, Batilly, Loup-des- Vignes, Villeneuve- 
le-roi, Montargis, Voisines, Clery and other places/ The uni- 
formity of the customs thus inspired by Louis le Gros and con- 
tinued by Louis VIL and Philip Augustus must have produced, 
in a sense, a solidarity not otherwise to be attained.^ Other grants 
of privilege to places or persons, further attest Louis' deliberate 
efforts to break the iron grip of feudalism.^ But such qualified 
privileges would have contributed only slightly to the progress 
of liberty if the movement had not found in the communes cen- 
ters of aggressive agitation. 

The spell which feudalism and the church had conspired to 
cast over Europe was now broken by the rise of the cities. 
The strength of conscious power in the hearts of the burgher 
class, united with that solidarity which common interests imparted, 
now gave birth to what Europe had not known for centuries — 
the people. Europe had known men, but the vital energy of a 
popular spirit had been lost since the second decline of imperial 
rights in the west. 

It is not in the province of this dissertation to enter into a 
study of the origin of the mediaeval communes. Whether their 
germ be found in the revivification of latent Roman municipal sur- 
vivals; or in the assertion of Germanic traditions, not lost, but dor- 
mant ; whether guild corporations of merchants or craftsmen be 
responsible for the new life, or whether the initial impulse be 
found in some religious order, is not germane.* It is futile 
to try to identify the origin of the communes with any one 
form, nor will any collocation of these four elements explain 

' Ordonnances, t. VIII, p. 500 ; Viollet, 116, citing Warkonig Histoire de la 
Flandre, I. 305. The text of the Customs of Lorris may be found in the Ordon- 
nances, t. XI. pp. 200-203, in Prou, p. 125 ff. of the book form edition. An 
English translation is in Guizot, Hist, of Civilization in France, Course IV- 
Lect. 17. 

'Combes, 300. 

3Luchaire, Annales, Nos. 100, 102, 123, 197, 198,237, 244, 551, 553.554, 
555. 576, 586, 600, 608, 611. 612. 

■♦Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 159 ff. has a terse presentation of the various 
theories of origin. 



KING, COMMUNES, ROYALTY AND POPULAR CLASSES. 79 

the uprising. The fact remains that the class of simple freemen 
who had disappeared in the ninth .century, but the nature and 
condition of whose occupation had prevented them from being as 
tightly drawn into the feudal toils as others, come to light in 
the eleventh, and in the twelfth achieve political recognition. 
That the charters of the communes had for their prime object 
the restriction of the taxing power of the seigneur ; that their 
magistracy derived its numbers and attributes largely from pre- 
vious association ; that the fragments of customary law found in 
the charters point to Germanic origin ; that the communes of the 
twelfth century were aristocratic rather than democratic — these 
are the only statements which may be safely predicated.^ 

Leaving aside then the question of origins, a prime condition 
for communal life certainly existed in the local contiguity of 
those dwelling within walls. It was in many cases, we may believe, 
also an active cause, as much as the guild or religious associations. 
For it was natural that these communities, though governed 
entirely from without, should yet acquire some solidarity based 
on common interests. The ability to create wealth led the third 
estate inevitably to devise means to preserve wealth. Association, 
the only recourse of the weak, was the bar set against feudal arbi- 
trariness.^ Beside, there was an actual economic need. The towns- 
men demanded protection against the exactions of the clergy and 
the nobility. The event of first-rate importance in bringing, 
about this political renaissance, was the invasions of the North- 
men.3 The cities, roused from their lethargy of four centuries 

^ Qtxrj , Atablissnients de Rouen, I., 481. 

2 Compare the Carlovingian legislation against the conpirationes, true fore- 
runners of the later efforts towards a more perfect union. — Waitz, IV., 362-4. 

3 The incursions of the Northmen had been a prime cause of the erection 
of castles. (Tunc quoque domus ecclesiarum per Gallias universas, praeter 
quas municipia civitatum velcastrorum servaverunt, etc. — Rod. Glaber, 19. Col- 
lection de Texies de la Societe de I'^cole des Charles. Cf. the edict of Pistds, 
864, of Charles the Bald. De pace in Regno stabilienda, postscriptum I. in 
Walter, Corpus Juris Germanici antiqui III., 156-7. Berlin, 1824.) In medi- 
aeval MSS. municipium is often used in the sense of castle (Suger, 10, 44 
and n. i). Sometimes raj/rww, castellum or burgus appear in the same sense. 
(Galbert de Bruges, cc. ix., xxviii. Jean d'Ypres, in Mon. Germ. hist. Script., 
XXV., 768). The agglomerated population under the walls of the chateau was 



"8o DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

and forced to take vigorous and concerted action, acquired a 
unity not afterwards lost. This unity brought with it a conscious- 
ness of power, and from this period on we find in the scant 
records remaining not a few instances of rebellion against count 
or bishop. The Peasants' Revolt' in Normandy in 997, whether 
or not it affected the cities directly, at least shows the prevalence 
of the spirit. At Cambrai, as early as 957, the townsmen shut 
the gates against their bishop;* Beauvais rose in 1074 and the 
men of Rheims in 1082.3 Le Mans was crushed with frightful 
severity in io73,'* but in Amiens the revolution was so firmly 
planted that in T091 it was able to conclude an alliance with 
the Count of Flanders.^ In 11 14 (or 11 16) Angers in Anjou 
burst forth;® Lille and St. Omer in Flanders, in 1127,^ and so 
the list grows longer and the circle widens as the years of 
revolution pass. 

It is usual to say that the Crusades were a prime cause of the 
rise of the communes. But we have seen above that Cambrai, 
Beauvais, Rheims, Le Mans and Amiens, in the region of the North 
alone, not to speak of others elsewhere, had reached the term of 
communal individuality before the first crusade. ' In other words, 
the commune existed as a de facto institution before the Crusades 
began. The moral fact inherent in the rise of the communes 
has been lost sight of in the dazzle and glitter of arms, attendant 
\ upon the Crusades. The struggle of the mediaeval communes 
in France, quite as much as in Lombard Italy, was the struggle 
for an idea really greater than the idea which animated the 
crusading movement. The Crusades plunged Europe into three 
centuries of rapine and slaughter — into a warfare in which not 

called suburbani (Galbert de Burges, c. ix.) who became the bourgeois of the 
communal epoch. {Ibid., cc. ix., xxviii. Cf. the Charters of St. Omer of 1127, 
I128.) 

' See Freeman's Norman Conquest, I., 256-7. 

^Brentano, 31. 

sLuchaire, Iitst. Mon., II. 158, note. 

4 Freeman's Norman Conquesi, IV., 550-1. 

5 Wauters, Les libe7-tes communales, I., 365 ff. 
^Norgate, England under the Angevins, I., 234-5. 
^ Hermann de Tournai, M. G. H. SS., XIV., 289. 



KING, COMMUNES, ROYALTY AND POPULAR CLASSES. 8i 

only men and women but thousands of children, too, were 
•sacrificed for a purpose less worthy than that which character- 
ized the warfare which racked Europe in the centuries follow- 
ing the second decline of imperial rights in the West. The 
conflict of pope and emperor, of emperor and Lombard 
cities, the wars of Otto I. and Henry III. with the great 
ducal houses, the Norman Conquest, the struggle between the 
Angevins and the French kings, all these were wars for real 
or fancied rights more real, more legitimate and less fanciful 
than were the wars of the Crusades. Crusading degenerated into 
a brilliant folly like that of tourneying, because the idea was too 
vague, the legitimacy of the movement too doubtful. The idea 
was mystical, even as its great preacher, St. Bernard, was a mystic. 
No one needs to be told that the results of the Crusades were 
far different from the intentions of their promoters : "Increasing 
at first the power of the popes and the Roman hierarchy, they 
tended at last to impair and diminish it. Expected to knit 
together the Latin and Greek churches, they made their divisions 
wider and added a feeling of exacerbation to their mutual relations. 
Intended to destroy forever Mahometan power in the East, they 
really contributed to strengthen it. Undertaken as a religious 
war to propagate the faith of Christ with the sword of Mahomet, 
and to vindicate Christian dogma against unbelievers, they really 
subserved the interests of free thought."^ But apart from these 
wholly unforeseen and anomalous results, the Crusades were less 
fruitful of good effects than generally believed. The political 
results to Europe were slight.^ Moreover, the economic results 
were quite as much a cause. Events are formative or result- 
ant in their character according to the point of view, but 
in the study of history the point of view is the point quite as 
much as the thing seen from it. In measuring their effects, the 
Crusades must be taken as a whole. Their results were the results 
of a cumulative movement. It is quite impossible to posit defi- 
nite effects to any one of them ; how little, then, can be positively 

^ Owen, Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance, p. 24. 

= Green, Short History of the English People, does not mention the crusades, 
«xcept the incidental fact that Richard 1. v/as a leader of the second crusade. 



82 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

predicated as to the effects of the movement upon France in the 
twelfth century when the Crusades were yet in their beginning? 

If it is impossible to distinguish with precision between the 
civilization sprung of the Crusades as a European movement and 
that which might have occurred without them, it is more impos- 
sible to ascribe any but the vaguest and slightest results which 
might have accrued from them to France in the reign of Louis 
VI. Mere absence from home of the barons was, I am inclined to 
believe, the most advantage derived by Louis VI. from this 
great European movement. The fighting instinct born in the 
blood and transmitted through two centuries of private warfare, 
denied expression at home, owing to the Truce of God and the 
vigor of the king,' sought relief in foreign war. The well-known 
letter of Suger^ to Louis VII. is evidence that France felt the 
peace secured by the absence of turbulent barons more than any- 
thing else. The Crusades, in their inception, were a class move- 
ment, planned by princes and barons. They had little of the vital 
energy of a popular spirit. The people were more concerned 
in seeing the despoilers of their peace going away than in going 
themselves. After the first flush of triumph which followed the 
capture of Jerusalem, Europe again became absorbed in the 
nearer and keener struggle of emperor and pope. Men settled 
back into the old lines. When Edessa fell, the work-a-day world 
had almost forgotten that there was such a Christian outpost in 
Palestine. The shock of startled surprise that thrilled Europe 
when Edessa was taken is proof positive of how slight was the 
permanent effect which the first Crusade had exercised upon the 
mind of Europe in the twelfth century. 

Having thus considered the origins of the communal move- 
ment, so far as necessary, it remains to inquire into the essential 
feature of the mediaeval French commune. The essential ele- 
ments of a commune were, first, an association confirmed 
by a charter; second, a code of fixed and sanctioned cus- 

' According to Rambaud, Civilisation francaise. Vol. I., p. 224, Louis IX., 
in establishing the Quarantaine-le-Roi, simply revived an ordinance of Louis 
VL 

2 H. F., XV., 509. 



KING, COMMUNES, ROYALTY AND POPULAR CLASSES. 83 

toms; third, a series of privileges which always included 
municipal or elective government.' The charter was at once a 
feudal title and a scheme of government. The principle that 
the commune had no right to exist without its charter was an 
invariable rule of the early period of the communal era.' The 
commune was, therefore, a sort of petit etat. Yet no city of 
France ever achieved the republican freedom of Florence or 
Venice ; no French king ever tolerated such municipal autonomy 
as the emperor was forced to .abide in Lombard Italy.3 Orleans, | 
the only one which tried to make itself a commune in the highest 
sense, was crushed.'* 

The ancient legend that Louis VI. was the founder ^ of the 
communes is as untrue as the statement that he was their direct 
enemy.' The documentary history of the early communal epoch 

' Brequigny, Oi'donnances, XI., Introd. vii. 
^Luchaire, Manuel, 414. 
3 Freeman's Norman Conquest, IV., 349. 

•♦By Louis VII. H. F., XII., 196; Hist, du Roi Louis VII., c. i. See 
Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 170. 

SBrussel, I., 178. Such categorical statements as that are not uncommon 
among the early historians. The Charte of 1814 will be remembered to have 
given this statement royal dress. A singular feature must be noticed here : 
It is the common belief that communal privileges were granted the bour- 
geois by the king, in order to relieve his subjects of grievous exactions, 
or at least prevent such exactions from being wholly empirical. If this 
were so it ought to follow that the communes be started in places where 
feudal oppressions were worst; whereas we find many of those recognized 
by Louis le Gros in fiefs of the church. Half the communes known to 
owe their foundation to him are so situated— Noyon, Beauvais, Soissons, 
Saint-Riquier, Corbie. (This enumeration does not include Laon, Amiens, 
or Bruyeres-sous-Laon, where money figured as the prime motive.) Now 
the condition of serfs bound to the church glebe was better than average. 
(See this dissertation, p. 75, n. 5.) What is the conclusion? The bishops were 
an urban, the nobles a rural, aristocracy; in the cities popular feeling was 
rife, and Louis VI. saw in them points of resistance to the prevailing regime. 
This fact to me is luminous, for it shows that he did 7?iore than let the movement 
merely take its course. M. Dareste comes very near to the truth when he says : 
" L'erreur si longtemps accreditee, qui attribuait a la royaute I'initiative de la 
revolution communale, pent s'expliquer par le fait de son intervention progres- 
sive dans le gouvernement des y\\\e&:''—E Administration de la France. I., 173. 
^Giry, Etablissements de Rouen, I., 441. 



V 



84 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

is very scanty ; ^ and opinions advanced regarding the policy 
pursued by Louis VI. and even Louis VII. must necessarily be 
hardly more than inferences ; although with the latter there is 
some degree of consistency in municipal organizations,' Louis 
VI. really had no policy towards them save that of expediency .^ 
He favored them when it paid him so to do ; he crushed them 
as readily when it profited him. M. Luchaire* has happily 
characterized his attitude as one of demi-hostility. But he was 
far from allowing the movement to take its own course. The 
act relating to Saint-Riquier^ is proof positive. In the imme- 
~9late realm Louis VI. was unwilling to sanction in others rights 
and prerogatives rivalling his own. But from the planting of 
communes in vassal territory the king received both negative and 
positive benefit; negative because an obnoxious local authority 
was somewhat neutralized ; positive because the acquisition of local 
self-government was purchased of the king with little sacrifice 
of his own sovereignty.* The territory of the communes, further- 
more, became king's land. In the eleven cases in which Louis 
VI. granted communal charters, every grant is made outside of 
the royal domain, save that of Dreux.^ These were Noyon,^ 
Mantes,^ Laon," Amiens," Corbie,'^ Saint-Riquier,'' Soissons,"* 
Bruyeres-sous-Laon and its dependencies, /. e., Cheret, Vorges 
and Valbon;'^ Beauvais,'® Dreux,'^ and the collective commune 

' Giry, Etablissemenfs de Rotien, I., 145. 

^Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 140. 

3 "Ob und inwieweit Ludwig die bereits langer bestehende Bewegung zur 
Bildung sogenannter 'Kommunen' nach bestimmten Gesichtspunkten zur 
Erweiterung seines Machtbereiches oder Verstarkung seines Einflusses im 
Reiche auszuniitzen sich bemiiht hat, konnen wir nicht nachweisen ; gegen 
eine solche Tendenz sprechen wenigstens die vielen Widerspriiche in seinem 
Verhalten gegeniiber den Kommunen." — Hirsch, 13. 

* Les Comtnunes Francaises, 276. 

5 Luchaire, Annales, No. 372. Guizot, Hist. Civilization in France. Course 
IV., Lect. 19. 

* Walker, 104. 7 Luchaire, Les Communes Francaises, T-b"]. 
^Luchaire, Annates, No. 64. ^ Ibid., No. 105. 

^° Ibid., No. 124. '^^Ibid., No. 372. ^^ Ibid., No. 603. 

"Ibid., No. 169. ^'■Ibid., No. 377. '7 Jbid., No. 624. 

"Ibid., No. 337. ^^Ibid., No. 435. 



KING, COMMUNES, ROYALTY AND POPULAR CLASSES. 85 

of Vailli, Conde, Chavonnes, Celles, Pargni and Filiain, near 
Soissons.' We are in complete darkness as to the circumstances 
attending the foundation of Dreux ; the date is unknown, even 
approximately (1108-1137).^ It is probable that since the Vexin 
was a marcher county, Louis VI. was led to believe that a large 
degree of autonomy might make the place a better bulwark against 
the English foe. We know Philip Augustus adopted this plan with 
success, the suggestion of which not unlikely lay in Dreux of the 
Vexin. 3 

A study of the charters of the communes is instructive. Louis 
VI. was a soldier. As such he most needed men and money. In 
establishing a' commune in the sphere of a feudal lord he secured 
the double advantage of securing money and sowing dragons' 
teeth in the path of the lord. The cases in which the men of a 
commune are granted exemption from military service are very 
rare.* In enumerating privileges granted by Louis VI. the repe- 
tition of the denial of exemption from military service is striking.^ 
And yet there is little foundation for the favorite belief of histori- 
ans® that Louis VI., in his wars, made large use of the men of the 
communes as such. Contemporary chronicles show little. indication 
of such a host. The most of his expeditions were made at the 

' Luchaire, Antiales, No. 626. On these rural or federative communes see 
Luchaire, Les Commttnes Francaises, 68-96. The radiant character they had 
served to accentuate the movement against bishop and baron. — Luchaire, 
Inst. Mon. ,ll., 178. 

^ All that is known of the history of Dreux is comprehended in Luchaire, 
Inst Mon., 11., 6, note 1. 

3 Walker, 105. "la commune etait avant tout, a ses yeux, une forteresse, 
une instrument de guerre destine a la defensive." — Luchaire Les Milices com- 
munales, Acad, des Sciences moral, et polit. 1888, p. 165. 

'^ Revue Hist, xliv., (1890) p. 326. Prou : De la nature du service militaire 
du par les roturiers dux XI^ et XII^ siecles. 

s Luchaire, Inst. Man., IL, 194. Cf. The prohibition upon the enfranchised 
serfs of Laon ; see this dissertation, p. 76. n. 3. In the renunciation of rights 
over the lands of Saint-Martin-des-Champs in Pontoise (1128) the charter pro- 
vides, "excepta sola expeditione." — Luchaire, /«j'/. iJ/t?;?., II., 150, n. 3. Cf, 
Annates, Nos. ill (where even the bourgeois of Paris are held to service), 124, 
419, 440. Boutaric 203. The customs of Lorris were exceptional in that 
military service was required for a day at a time only (Art. 3). 
* Even Vuitry, I., 376 has fallen into this error. 



86 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

head of the body of knights who were always around him." For 
a distant campaign he convoked the contingents due him, in 
virtue of feudal law, of seigneurs, bishops, abbots, and vassals of 
the crown. ^ The church furnished contingents from the parishes, 
organized by their cures, as a consequence of the Truce of God, 
promulgated at Clermont, but such service was gratuitous and 
not to be confounded with the feudal service. 3 The communes, 
as such, do not appear under arms, even in the army of 1124, 
when the emperor Henry V. thought to revive the days of the 
Ottos. The terms employed by Suger indicate that forces were 
there from Rheims, Chalons, Laon, Soisson, Etampes, Amiens, 
Orleans, Paris, and the country surrounding each ; but they were 
there as men of a common host, not as communal troops.'* There 
is no reason to believe this host was anything else than a general 
levee, similar to that called out after the bitter defeat of Bremule,^ 
(11 19). French history was not without such precedents in that 
time.^ Troops from Soissons, Amiens, Noyon, Mantes and Corbeil 
may have been there, though the chronicle does not say so of the 
last three, but they were there, not as autonomous forces, but as 
parts of a common army. The revolution of the ninth century 

^ Even in the battle of Bremule (1119) Louis had only the knights of Paris 
and the Vexin. (Ord. Vit., IV., 357.) 

2 Luchaire, Les Milices Communales, Acad, des Sciences moral, et polit., 1888, 
\/ p. 160. See Suger's enumeration of the vassals of the crown who went into 
Auvergne with Louis VI. — Suger, 108. 

3 "Oil I'Eglise rendit un service gracieux au roi, ce fut quand elle organisa 
les milices paroissiales, je veux dire ces petites troupes qui, sous la conduite des 
cures, allaient aider le souverain a chatier les rebelles et a maintenir la paix. 
Mais il faut se garder de confondre le service militarie que I'Eglise demandait 
ainsi aux fideles avec le service d'ost et de' chevauchee. Les milices dont parle 
Ord. Vit. etaient (Book VIII., chap, xxiv; Book XL, chap, xxxiv.; Book XII., 
chap. 19) une consequence immediate de la Paix de Dieu." — Revue Hist., x\\y., 
(1890) pp. 325-6. Prou : De la nature du service niilitaire du par les roturieurs > 
aux XI^ et XII^ sitcles. For a case of a fighting priest with his parochial 
force, see Suger, 65. 

■t Luchaire, Les Milices communales, Acad, des Sciences moral, et polit., 1888, 
p. 161. See Suger's account of the projected invasion, c. xxvii. 

5 Suger, 92 ; Ord. Vit., IV., 365 ff. 

* Luchaire, Liist. Man., II. , 48-9, gives the cases. 



KING, COMMUNES, ROYALTY AND POPULAR CLASSES. 87 

had thrust the relations of a vassal into those of a subject and a 
citizen/ and the feudal military tenures had superseded the ear- 
lier system of public defense.^ Louis VI., by making the bour- 
geois liable to bear arms, was in reality reasserting a national, 
and hence an old principle — a revival of the ancient duty of free- 
men.^ He sought to make every man a patriot. The commune 
was an instrument of war to be used when the state had to fall 
back of its regular fighting force upon the hearths of its people, 
as in the case of the invasion of Henry V."* 

Though the king obtained in the use of communal militia a 
body of troops which could be more promptly put in the field, 
when he wished, than those amenable to an intermediate noble,^ 
still the chief advantage to the crown was not in the men, but in 
the money the communes secured to the king. The desire for 
money will often explain the vacillating attitude of Louis VI., 
and even of Louis VII. Louis VI. loved gold* to the verge even / 

' Baluze, t. II., 44. 

2 The inadequacy of feudal military service is well shown in the expedition 
which Louis directed against Thomas de Marie, when the chevaliers refused 
almost unanimously to cooperate with the king in the seige of Creci : — De mil- 
itibus autem vix quispiam coarmari voluit, cumque aperte eis proditionis arces- 
seret, accitis pedestribus, ipsi, etc. (H. F., XII., 262.) Whence it appears that 
Louis had to rely upon contingents from ecclesiastical seigneuries. (Consult 
Luchaire, Jnst. Mon., II., 52, note 2.) 

3 See the article by M. Prou before referred to. M. Prou argues that hostis 
and expeditio originally had reference to any sort of military service ; that their 
obligation was not upon feudal tenants as such, but was a continuation of the 
ancient duty of freemen. I doubt if the continuity of such requirements was 
perfect as he holds. It seems to me that the act of Louis VI. was, as stated 
above, a revival of the former practice. 

■♦This appears in the charter to Augere-Regis (1119). " Neque ipsi in 
expedicionem vel in equitatum, nisi per communitatem, scilicet si omnes com- 
muniter ire juberentur et irent." — Ordonnances, VII., 444. Luchaire, Annates, 
No. 273. And in this, to the serfs of the Laonnais (1129). "Masculi vero 
.... expediciones nostras bannales debent, si submoniti hunt." — Ibid. p. 338. 

sSee Boutaric, 156-60. 

* See the complaint (1120) of the people of Compiegne on account of the 
degradation of the coin (Luchaire, Annales, No. 296). Louis VI. 's act of recti- 
fication is in Mabillon, 598. Compare Luchaire, Bist. Mon., I, 100; Manuel, 
591. Vuitry, L, 437, cites similar complaints in 11 12 and 11 13. 



88 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

of compromising his honor to obtain it. Amiens/ Laon^ and 
Bruyeres-sous-Laons were each founded in consideration of a 
sum of money. The history of Laon especially, is eloquent 
testimony of Louis VI. 's cold-blooded way of raising money. 

If the attitude of the king was determined by circumstances, 
that of the clergy and nobles was no less so determined ; only in 
their case it was one of unfailing hostility.'* The dignitaries of 
the church were often merely barons covered with the alb, and 
saw in the new institution a partial subversion of their rights. ^ 
The words of Guibert de Nogent^ are echoed by Bernard of 
Clairvaux and Ives of Chartres.^ More than one pope demanded 
the abolition of a commune founded in ecclesiastical holdings.^ 

' At Amiens the burghers by outbidding the bishop retained their liberties. 
(Guib. de Nogent, X., 45) See Thierry, Hist, du tiers-eiat, 318. 

^ In the case of Laon, Louis VI. granted (mi) the charter to the citizens, 
and then revolted it (11 12) in payment of a higher sum by Gaudri, the bishop. 
In 1 128 a charter was definitively granted. "II est tres precieux pour I'histoire 
du droit penal." Violett, Hist, du Droit fran^ais, 115. The history of Laon 
has often been recounted.- See Thierry, Lettres sur Vhist. de France, XVI.; 
Martin, III., 251-2; Clamageran, I., 232 ff.; Guizot, Hist. Civilization in 
France, IV., Lect. 17; \jViz\i2i\xQ., Annates, Nos. 124, 132, 189, 425; Guib. de 
Nogent, H. F. XIL, 250. 

3 Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 175. Louis VII. was bribed to abolish Auxerre 
in 1 175 {Ibid., 176). In general, on this phase, see Ibid., pp. 192-4. 

^ Luchaire, Inst. Mo72., II., 176 ; Les Coin7mines Fran^aises, 244. 

s Hegel surely is in error when he ascribes grants of charters by the clergy 
to their good will. From first to last they manifested hostility. See Luchaire, 
Inst. Mon., II., 163. Noyon seems to afford the rare instance of a commune 
founded on petition of a bishop in order to reconcile the townsmen and the 
chapter ; but this is not beyond peradventure. — See Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 
177, note 2. In Corbie the three orders united in an application to Louis le 
Gros. — Ibid., IT., 178, note 3; Annates, No. 337. 

^ Communis novum ac pessissimum nomen, sic se habet, ut capite censi 
solitum servitutis debitum dominis semel in anno solvant, etc. — De vita sua, Bk. 
IIL, c. vii.; H. F., XII., 250. 

'Pactaenim et constitutiones vel etiam juramenta quae sunt contra leges 
canonicas vel auctoritates sanctorum Patrum, sicut vos ipsi bene nostris nullius 
sunt nomenti. — Epist. 77, H. F., XV., 105. 

^ For example, Pope Eugenius II. demanded the destruction of the charter 
of Sens (1147 or 1149) (Thierry, Lettres sur V Histoire de Fratice, XIX.), and 
Innocent, II., that of Rheims {Ibid., XX.). 



KING, COMMUNES, ROYALTY AND POPULAR CLASSES. 89 

The attitude of the chatelains was hardly less tolerant. Their 
conduct toward the bourgeois depended largely upon their rela- 
tions with the bishop. The charter of Amiens was directed 
against the house of Boves, which had become hereditarily 
invested in the chatellany/ while Beauvais'' had its origin in an 
effort of Louis VI. to preserve the chatelain and bourgeois from 
the bishop. 

The amount of political freedom accorded by Louis VL varied 
with circumstances. In the interests of local self-government 
something of royal supervision had to be sacrificed ; but there is 
little preciseness in this regard. ^ Owing to abuses by the prevot, 
the commune was allowed the privilege of trying its own cases j '\ 
this privilege was a conditional one, however, dependent upon 
strict support of law. In event of malfeasance, the rights 
accorded reverted to the king."^ The process of Joslin, the bishop 
of Soissons, against the commune (1136) and the sentence of the 
court, is evidence that Louis VI. kept the communes well in hand, 
allowing them neither to be derelict nor arrogant. ^ In cities 
holding directl}'' of the crown, there was absolute repression of 
the communes. The two most important cities of the realm were 

^ Luchaire, Lnst. Moii., II., 177, note 3; Thierry, j^mA dn tiers-etat, 318 
The chatelains by the twelfth century had become hereditary (see Galbert de 
Bruges, pp. 97, note i and 150, note I, with references there given). Enguer- 
rand de Boves was the father Thomas de Marie (Sugar, 83, note 3). 

2 Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 177, note 4. On Beauvais, see Guizot, Hist, of 
Civilizatiott in France, IV., appendix iv. The gradual evolution of the com- 
mune of Beauvais is seen in the successive concessions of Louis VI. (Luchaire, 
Anttales, Nos. 174, 198, 322, 603). 

3 Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 191-2. 

•* Ordontia7ices, XL, Introd. xliii., by Brequigny. Cf. Pardessus, 347 :— " Sans 
doute, dans un certain nombre de communes, les habitants obtinrent le droit de 
choisir des magistrats, qui veillaient a I'administration interieure, a I'execution 
des statuts, a la defense generale, et qui rendaient la justice ; mais c'etaient 
simplement des garanties pour le maintien des concessions obtenues. ... A 
I'instant oil les parties se trouvaient en presence, soit pour prevenii, soit pour 
pacifier une insurrection, le seigneur etait en possession de droits, dont on ne 
contestait pas I'existence, et dont seulement on voulait faire reformer I'abuse ou 
I'extension injuste." 

s Luchaire, Annates, No. 567. The process of the court is given in full in 
Langlois, Textes relatifs a VHistoire du Parlement de Paris, No. VIII. 



90 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

not communes — Paris and Orleans.' The privileged towns," 
having no local independent government were favored by the 
king, who in the possession of privileges and exemptions made 
little distinction between them and the great communes. Yet 
Paris,3 Orleans,'* Etampes,^ Bourges * and Compiegne ^ were better 
off for the restraint of the royal hand. The civil and commercial 
advantages which Louis VI. gave them were assured more peace- 
able enjoyment and more normal development, because the 
directive influence of the monarchy prevented such excesses as 
occurred at Laon or Amiens.^ 

Although no exact status can be ascribed to the communes 
of the reign of Louis, although they were still involved in the 
meshes of feudalism, yet the importance of his reign in its influ- 
ence upon the communes, to the future power of the crown 
was very great.' The Tiers-Etat was yet in the gristle; but by 

'Brussel, I., 182. 

= The admirable account of these privileged towns by M. Liichaire {Inst. 
Mon., II., 144-157) precludes any extended discussion here. 

3 Luchaire, ^««rt/fj, Nos. iii, 303, 533, 596, 623. These acts show thas 
the bourgeois of Paris were the object of Louis VI. 's special solicitude. It it 
significant that the term bourgeois first occurs in his reign. The word Burgmses 
is found six times in an ordonnance of the year 1134. Brussel, II., 941 : Ego 
Ludovicus .... notum fieri volumus .... quod Burgensibus nostris Parisi- 
ensibus universis praecipimus et concedimus, etc. — Brussel, II., 941. 

'• Luchaire, Annates, No. 582. 

^ Ibid., No. 533. This was granted in 1 123, and revoked for cause in 1129. 
(No. 437). 

^Ibid., No. 578. 

'' Ibid., No. 297. 

® Levasseur, I., p. 186. 

9 " In France the kings used the people against the nobles as long as it 
suited their purpose and in the end brought nobles, people and clergy into one 
common bondage. This strengthening of the power of the PVench king within 
his own dominions was naturally accompanied by increased vigor in the rela- 
tions of the crown to the princes who owed it a nominal homage. The reign of 
Louis the Fat may be set down as the beginning of that gradual growth of 
the Parisian monarchy which in the end swallowed up all the states which 
owed it homage, besides so large a part of the German and Burgundian king- 
doms." — Freeman, Noivnatt Conquest, V., 179. The modest beginnings of the 
grand vassals with respect to the communes, precluded any exercise of the 
king's authority save that of confirmation. In 1 127 Louis VI. countersigned 



KING, COMMUNES, ROYALTY AND POPULAR CLASSES. 91 

an early appropriation of the commune as an instrument of crown 
power, Louis assured to the monarchy the bone and sinew of suc- 
. ceeding centuries. In after years it was largely to the cities that 
France was indebted for the extension of her territory. Her 
geographic changes were greatly modified by the revolutions of 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.' 

the charters of St. Omer and Bruges, in Flanders (Luchaire, Annales, No. 384) 
but such intervention in the domain of a grand vassal is entirely explained by 
his support of William Clito {Ibid., Introd., cxciii.). 
'Pigeonneau, I., 177. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICS. 

Foreign relations occupy a place of comparatively slight impor- 
tance in the reign of Louis VL, when the crown was strength- 
ening itself intensively. England, Germany and the Papacy were 
the three powers most in contact with France at this time, 
but the relations with each were quite different. With England 
the relations of France were political, and the point of contact, 
through Normandy, was direct. With the empire and the pope 
her relations were dynastic and ecclesiastical, and less vitally 
connected. 

The hostile attitude of England, when the French crown was 
fortifying itself intensively, was most to be feared. Henry I. 
had no such imperial pretensions as Rufus had entertained. His 
wars were wars, not of annihilation, as his brother's had been, 
but of limitation,^ and in the fact that his schemes were so feasible 
lay the danger to France. The question of the Norman-French 
frontiers, therefore, becomes of greater significance than the 
fighting on the borders would at first betoken.^ As the sphere 
of his activity enlarged Louis came in contact with a coalition 
directed by the English king, who was aided from the first by 
the powerful house of Blois^ and later enlisted the services of 
his imperial son-in-law, Henry V. of Germany, in his behalf.'* 

The wars between the two monarchs dragged on, with inter- 
ruptions, over a series of years, and were waged with varying 
success ; but throughout, Louis VL never lost sight of the idea 

' Freeman, Norman Conquest, V., 204-5. 

» " Varum quia Normanorum marchia, tam regum Anglorum quam Norman- 
orum ducum nobili providentia et novorum positione castroumetinvadaliumflu- 
minum decursu extra alias cingebatur, rex," etc. — Suger, 86. Cf. 6. 

3Suger, 66. , 

4 Ibid., 1 01-3. 

92 



FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICS. 93 

that the king of England was his vassal. Henry I. chafed under 
the rigid enforcement of a feudal right by one whom he deemed 
his political inferior' especially since his father from the day of 
the Conquest had disregarded the bond, and even Rufus had 
regarded Normandy as a land to be fought for."* 

The pretext of the first war (111T-1113 ) was a dispute over 
the border fortress of Gisors,^ and the enmity engendered 
between Louis VI. and Thibaud of Blois over the erection of a 
castle."* But back of all was the never-ending grudge between 
the duke of Normandy and the king of France. There were 
military operations in Brie in the summer of iiii, during the 
course of which Robert II., count of Flanders, whom Louis had 
summoned to his aid, was killed by a fall from his horse near the 
bridge of Meaux.^ In the spring and summer of the next year 
the war was renewed with more intensity. Thibaud during the 
winter had succeeded in forming a feudal coalition against the 
French king, comprising Lancelin de Bulles, seigneur of Dam- 
martin, Paien de Montjai, Ralph of Beaugerci, Milon de Brai, 
viscount of Troyes, the notorious Hugh de Creci, lord of Chateau- 
fort, Guy II. of Rochefort, and Hugh, count of Troyes. The 
king had planned a trip to Flanders, but was apprised of the 
danger, while at Corbeil, by Suger, then episcopal prevot of 
Touri. Near Touri the royal arms were defeated by the allies, 
aided by-.the arrival of some Norman knights. Nothing daunted, 
however, Louis at once retrieved his fortunes. Taking advan- 
tage of the separation of his enemies, he shut up Hugh in le 
Puiset by fortifying Janville, over against it, and then, sustained 

' Et quoniam "omnis potestas impatiens consortis erit" rex Francorum 
Ludovicus, ea qua supereminebat regi Anglorum ducique Normanorum Henrico 
sublimitate, in eum semper tanquam in feodatum suum efferebatur. — Suger, 85. 

2 Freeman, Norman Conquest, V., 193. 

3 Suger, 48. 

'■ Comes Theobaldus .... machinebatur marchiam suam amplificare 
castrum erigendo in potestate Puteoli quod de feodo regis fuerat .... sub- 
verso igitur omino prefato castra Theobaldus comes, fretus avunculi 

sui regis Anglici incliti Henrici auxilio, regi Ludovico cum complicibus suis 
guerram movet." — Ibid., 66. 

SLuchaire, Annales, No 12 1. 



94 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

by Ralph of Vermandois and Dreu de Mouchi, he fell upon Thi- 
baud, who was glad to fall back upon Chartres. Hugh and his 
chatelain then surrendered to the French king who declared 
Hugh deprived of his hereditary rights, and for the second time 
destroyed the castle of le Puiset.' In the fall (1112) hostilities 
began again. Louis was aided by the count of Anjou and some 
Norman barons, among whom were Amauri de Montfort, count 
of Evreux, William Crispin and Robert of Bellgme, the last of 
whom Louis sent as ambassador to the English king. But 
Henry thrust him into prison in Cherbourg, and in the follow- 
ing year he was carried over to England." The winter of 11 12-3 
cooled the ardor of the combatants. In March the two kings 
held a conference near Gisors, and there peace was made. Louis 
renounced in favor of Henry the suzerainty of the seigneury of 
BellSme as well as his claims upon the counties of Maine and 
Brittany. The French barons who had taken part against their 
lord gained nothing by their espousal of Henry's cause, for the 
English king let them lie at the mercy of their overlord.^ 

In the interval of peace Henry I. tried to force the Norman 
baronage to do homage to the Aetheling William (11 15). The 
attempt provoked a counter-movement by Louis VI. in favor of 
William Clito, Henry's nephew by his brother Robert. The 
French king meant to give to Normandy a master who would 
never be seated upon the throne of England.'' In the absence 
of Henry I. from Normandy, the duty of guarding the English 
interests fell upon Thibaud. Louis had made an alliance with 
Foulque, the count of Anjou, and with Baldwin VII., the new 
count of Flanders. A desultory conflict was carried on through- 
out the summer and autumn of 11 16 in the Vexin, Picardy and 
in the vicinity of Chartres.^ In the next summer, however, the 
French king and the count of Flanders entered Normandy. 

'Luchaire, Annales, No. 134. 
''Ibid., Nos. 148, 149. 

3 Ibid., No. 158. 

4 Freeman, Norman Conquest, V., 187. 
SLuchaire, Annales, No. 207. 



FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICS. 95 

But the danger had been great enough to call Henry from 
beyond sea and the French host had to retreat before the army 
of Henry, composed of English, Normans and Bretons (summer 
of 1 1 1 7).' During the winter the coalition formed by the French 
king against Henry I. was augmented by the addition of several 
of the Norman baronage, especially of Enguerran de Chaumont. 
Early in the spring of 11 18 the united forces entered the Vexin, 
surprised the Chateau de Gasny and attacked with success the new 
fortress Malassis, both of which fortresses had been newly erected 
by the English king. It is not improbable, even, that the French 
forces ravaged Normandy as far as Rouen. ^ 

But Louis VI. was no match for the king of the English. 
Even in force of arms he was surpassed by Henry I. while in 
diplomacy and intrigue he was far the inferior of his English 
rival, as the result of Henry's winter machinations proved to 
him. The war had been renewed as usual with the beginning of 
spring (11 19),^ but Henry was in no hurry to begin active hostil- 
ities. While Louis occupied himself in insignificant sieges along 
the Andelle and Epte rivers, the English king succeeded in 
estranging Louis' most powerful ally. Foulque (1109-1142) of 
Anjou was lured away from the Side of the French king by 
the marriage of his daughter to the English heir, the ^theling 
William,'* thus leaving the count of Flanders the only staunch 
ally upon whom Louis could depend. 

In August Louis crossed the Andelle river and entered Nor- 
mandy. Henry was at Noyon-sur-l'Andelle. In the plain of 
Bremule, in spite of the efforts of Burchard of Montmorenci 
to dissuade the French king, the two armies met in combat 
(August 20, 1 1 19). The battle of Bremule was a complete rout 

' Luchaire, Annates, No. 229. 

■2 Ibid., No. 233. Suger, 86-9 and Ord. Vit, IV., 311, differ in details. 

^Ibid., Nos. 252, 257, 258. 

''Comes etiam Andegavensis Fulco, cum et proprio iiominio et multis 
sacramentis, obsidum etiam multiplicate regi Ludovico confederatus esset, 
avaritiam fidelitate preponens, inconsulto rege, perfidia infamatus, filiam suam 
regis Anglici filio Guilelmo nuptui tradidit. — Suger, 91. See Freeman, Norman 
Conquest, V., 184. 



96 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

of the French forces.' In bitter shame Louis returned to Paris, 
where Amauri de Montfort revived his courage by advising a 
general muster of contingents under bishops, counts and other 
lords. The fyrd gathered from near and far. Forces came from 
Bourgogne, Berry and Auvergne in the south, from Lille, Tournai 
and Arras in Flanders, as well as from the nearer localities of 
Senonais,Laonnais,Beauvaisis,Vermandois, Etampes and Noyon." 
The new host invaded Normandy, burned Ivri and began the 
siege of Breteuil.^ Ralph the Breton, however, succeeded in 
holding the place until the arrival of Henry L The French 
king then turned his arms against the count of Blois. Owing, 
however, to the intercession of the chapter of Notre-Dame de 
Chartres, and the bourgeois, Chartres was spared from flames,* 
and Louis dispersed his troops in order to meet Pope Calixtus II. 
The advantage Louis now took of the presence of Calixtus in 
France is probably the least commendable event of his reign. 
Nothing short of a moral preponderance could remove the sting 
of defeat from the breast of the French king. In the council of 
Rheims (October 20-30, T119), the king set forth in detail his 
complaint against Henry, appearing in person before that august 
body. He told how, Henry I. had seized upon his fief of Nor- 
mandy and deprived its lawful duke of his heritage; how Henry 
had imprisoned his own nephew, William the Clito, and his ambas- 
sador, Robert of Belleme, and had stirred up Count Thibaud, his 

^ In quo bello fugit ipse rex Ludovicus, captique sunt ibi pene omnes Fran- 
ciae proceres et optimates. — Ex chron. inortui-maris, H. F., XII., 782. The 
territorial idea in the word " Franciae " is to be observed. Suger (90-1) dis- 
guises the true nature of this battle. Cf. Ord. Vit., IV., 355-363 and Luchaire, 
Annales, Nos. 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262. Freeman {Norman Conquest, V., 
186-190), and Norgate (I., 235-7) have each a good account. Velly relates 
that in the battle of Bremule an English knight having seized the bridle of 
Louis' horse, cried out, " The king is taken !" Louis, as he felled the boaster, 
rejoined, "Do you not know that in the game of chess the king is never 
taken ?" — an indication of his spirit if not his good judgment on that occa- 
sion. — {Hist, de France, II., 14. But no authorities are cited.) 

Ord. Vit., IV., 364-5 ; 366-9 ; Suger, 92. 

T'Ibid.; Chron. Maurin, H. F., XII., 74. 

< Ibid. 



FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICS. 97' 

vassal. The French prelates vouched for the truth of their king's 
accusations. The feeling of the assembly ran so high that Geof- 
frey, the archbishop of Rouen, who rose to vindicate his lord, 
was forced to desist. But Calixtus was not to be duped ; he 
would be arbiter, but not a cat's-paw. Accordingly he tried to 
satisfy Louis by hurling an anathema at the English king's impe- 
rial son-in-law Henry V. a proceeding which satisfied the pope 
far more than the French king, and then employed himself in 
making terms between the two monarchs.^ Calixtus met Henry 
in a conference at Gisors (22-27 Nov.). As a result, within a year, 
all castles and prisoners taken by either side were restored, and 
Louis VI. agreed to abandon the cause of the Pretender, Clito, in 
return for which concession, Henry's son, the Aetheling, by the 
father's command, again did homage to the king of France, his 
overlord. This fact of homage is remarkable, as there is no record 
of any homage done by either William Rufus or Henry ."" 

Within a year the loss of the English heir in the White Ship 
(1120) was destined to precipitate hostilities once more. On the 
failure of the English male line, Louis saw an opportunity more 
favorable than before, of giving to Normandy a duke who would 

' For the details of the Council of Rheims, see Lucliaire, Annales, No. 266. 
Ord. Vit., IV., 372-393, and Guil. de Nangis, 10 [SociSte de P Hist, de France). 
Suger, 94, differs in his account of Louis VI. from Ord Vit. Tlie text follows 
the latter. Freeman (^Norman Conquest, V., igo— 2) has a vivid account. The 
importance of the council of Rheims lies in the fact the pope has become the court 
of last resort for kings. 

^Freeman, Norman Conquest, N. 193. For details see Ord. Vit., IV., 
398-406. Luchaire, Annales, Nos. 267, 298. Freeman has missed the fact that 
Henry I.'s son did homage to Louis VI. at the end of the first war. " Cum 
autem Guilelmus regis anglici filius, regi Ludovico hominium suum fecisset," etc. 
— Suger, 52. The homage of Henry I.'s son is found in Will. Malms. V. 405: — 
Ordinibat (Henricus) . . . . ut hominium quod ipse pro culmine imperii fas- 
tideret facere, filius delicatus et qui putabatur viam sseculi ingressurus non 
recusaret. A fuller account is in H. F., XIV., 16. Fx Anonymi Blandinensis 
appendicula ad Sigbertum: — Ludovicus rex Francorum contra regem Angliee 
vadit, et usque Rotomagum omnia vastat, tandem conventum fuit ut Willelmus 
filius Henrici Regis Anglorum Normannian teneret de rege Franciae, et hom- 
magium sibi faceret, sicut Rollo primus Normannias Dux jure perpetuo 
promiserat. 



98 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

never be king of England.' He had a ready ally in Foulque, who 
had returned from Jerusalem and demanded the dowry of his 
daughter, the widow of the ill-starred Aetheling. But Henry I. 
was able to stir up a formidable adversary against the French 
king, and for the first time since the days of the Ottos, France 
and the Empire came into actual contact. England and the 
Empire had a common bond in that Henry V., the emperor, 
had married Matilda, daughter of the English king. It was 
Henry V., the German emperor, whom Henry I. now stirred 
up against his io^^ The war which hitherto had been of 
feudal character, now becomes a triangular conflict of inter- 
national importance. 3 The new adversary was enough to tax the 
prowess of a greater king than Louis VI. The most intense form 
of common interest is common danger, and the greatest danger 
of a people has always been war. The unanimity with which the 
vassals responded to the king's call, and the extent of the sum- 
mons, indicates a fervor approaching a national manifestation. 
There is evidence of latent nationality in the fact that barons 
who resisted the crown and struggled for petty independence at 
home, now, when exterior danger threatened, stood by the king 
in common cause.* The muster roll^ included all in the imme- 
diate realm, a levee en masse, besides the feudal contingents of the 

' Although the participation of Louis VI., in the plans of William Clito and 
Foulque of Anjou is not formally indicated, there is no doubt that he favored 
them. See Luchaire, Annales, No. 334. 

2 England appears upon the general scene of European politics as the 

enemy of France and the ally of Germany When the two Henrys are 

joined together against the Parisian king, we have the very state of things 
which Europe has since seen so many times repeated, from the day of English 
overthrow at Bouvines to the day of victory at Waterloo. — Freeman, Norman 
Conquest, V., 197. 

3 We now get evidence of a national antago7iism between the two realms. 
Thus Ekkehard {Man. Germ. Hist., VI., 262) says — "Teutonici non facile 
gentes impugnant exteras." And Suger (102) puts these words in the mouth of 
Louis VI. : " Transeamus audacter ad eos, ne redeuntes impune ferant, quod 
in terrarum dominam Franciam superbe presumpserunt," Cf. p. 30, where he 
speaks of "furor Theutonicus." 

4 Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 274 ; Daniel, I., 357. 

5 " Rex .... ut eum tota Francia sequatur potenter invitat." — Suger. 102. 
Suger's nuinbers, though, certainly are exaggerated. See Vuitry, I., 376, note. 



FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICS. 99 

Duke of Bourgogne, William VII, Duke of Aquitaine, and the 
Counts of Flanders, Champagne, Vermandois. Conan III. of 
Brittany, Charles the Good of Flanders, 'and Count Foulque, 
were late in coming, however, "because the length of the road 
and the brief time prevented." ^ The immediate object of the 
imperial attack was Rheims,^ whence the papal anathema had 
been launched, but ere the imperial army had gone further than 
Champagne, the emperor had to return,^ and the death in the next 
year of the last emperor of the Franconian house, removed all 
danger from the East. Meanwhile the Norman rebels had been 
crushed by Henry I. at Bourgtheroulde, and the silken oriflamme 
which Louis VI. had snatched from the altar of St. Denis," destined 

' See Suger's account, pp. 103-4. Of the last three he says "quod .... 
vie prolixitas et temporis brevitas prohiberet." A manuscript in the Biblio- 
theque nationale, recently published by M. Paul Viollet {Utie gratid chronique 
de Saint Denis. Observations pour servir a Vhistoire critique des Oeuvi'es de 
Suger, Bib. de V Ecole des Chartes, xxxiv., 1873, p. 244) interestingly shows 
how opinion was divided as to the manner of meeting the imperial army : — 
"Inquit (Louis VI.) quid inde agendum esset. Ibi dum varie varii opinarentur et 
aliqui hostes dignum ducerent preestotari, dicentes eos in regni medio facilius 
expugnandos, alii villas regni murari, et oppida pugilibus muniri dignum duce- 
rent, rex Teutonicam rapacitatem abhorrens, et damnum irreparabile si permit- 
terrentur ingredi spatiumque deesset muniendi civitates et oppida : " Non sic," 
inquit, "sed delectum militum sine mora colligendum censeo et in extremo ter- 
mino regni nostro loco mari validissimi adversaries expectare pede fixo." On 
this levy see Boutaric, 255 ff. On the participation of the Duke of Bourgogne, 
see Ernest Petit, Hist, des Dues de Bourgogne, I., 337-8. Inasmuch as the 
Count of Flanders was vassal of the emperor, also, it is not unreasonable to 
believe the " delay " of Charles was premeditated. 

= Sugar, loi ; Annul. S. Bened., VI., 113. 

3 The reason for this sudden retreat is involved in obscurity. The most 
probable cause is that of a popular uprising in Worms. (Ekkehard, Mon 
Germ. Hist., SS., VI., 262-3.) Suger (105-6) is too gleeful to be reliable. On 
the election of Lothar of Saxony and its effect on France, see this dissertation, 
P- 53- 

^ Suger, 102; Tardif, No. 391. The oriflamme was a red silk banner, 
three-pointed, tipped with green and hung upon a gilt spear. Originally the 
banner of the Count of the Vexin (Tardif, No. 391), when that county fell to the 
king (1107) the oriflamme became the national ensign. See DuCange, Dissert., 
XVII., Oeuvres de Suger {Soc. de f Hist, de France), 442-3. Daniel, I. 358. An 
ancient description of the oriflamme is in Guillaume le Breton, Book XL, 32-9. 



loo DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

from that day forth to be the national banner of France, drooped 
on its standard.' 

In the next few years the widowed empress married Geoffrey, 
son of Foulque the Black of Anjou, (1128) and the luckless Clito 
was consoled with the hand of Adeliza, half-sister of Louis' 
queen, and a grant of the French Vexin (1127).^ 

But peace again was of short duration. This time, however, 
the war was not of Louis' choosing ; Henry L was the aggressor. 
The occasion was one of the accidents of history, — the murder of 
Charles the Good of Flanders. Probably no single event from 
the capture of Jerusalem to the fall of Edessa so startled Europe 
as the murder of the Count of Flanders on the very steps of the 
altar of the church of St. Donatien, in Bruges (March 2, 1127). 

From the beginning of the twelfth century, the counts of 
Flanders had been on good terms with their French suzerain.3 
In the wars with Henry I., Baldwin VII. had sustained the crown 
of France until his death, in 11 19.* He left his title to his 
nephew Charles, surnamed the Good.^ Charles held to a neutral 
course in the wars between the kings of France and England, 
though he did not fail in loyalty to Louis le Gros.® The good 
reputation of Charles soon won him the respect of Europe. 
In 1 1 23 he declined an offer of the crown of Jerusalem, because 

It was at this time that Louis VI. enunciated the principle that the king could 
do homage to none. See this dissertation, p. 44. 

' On the third war between Louis VI. and Henry I., see Norman Conquest, 
v., 196-9. 

^Luchaire, Annales, No. 378. 

3 For the early relations of Flanders and France, see Pfister, Le Rigne de 
Robert le Pieux, 218-224. 

4 0rd. Vit.. IV., 316; Herman de Tournai, Mon. Germ. Hist. SS. XIV., 
284. 

s Galbert de Bruges, 3, and notes i and 3. Galbert calls him (p. 9) " Cath- 
olicus, bonus, religiosus, cultor Dei hominumque rector providus." See his 
eulogy, 6. Charles the Good was son of Canute IV. of Denmark and of 
Adela, daughter of the former Count of Flanders, Robert the Frison. Baldwin 
VII. was a grandson of the last and succeeded his father, Robert I., in mi. 
Charles was also cousin of Louis VI. by marriage. — Galbert de Bruges, 75, note 7. 

* William Malms., III., 257. He was in the army against Henry V. and 
also took part in the expedition into Auvergne. — Suger, 103, 108. 



FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICS. loi 

he would not desert his fatherland ; ' and two years afterwards 
the princes of the Empire offered him, in vain, the imperial 
scepter.'' 

On March 2, 11 27, the Count of Flanders was murdered at 
the instigation of Bertulf, the prevot of Bruges, because the count 
had discovered, in a judicial duel, his servile origin, which wealth 
and power had hitherto obscured. The news of the murder ran 
like wildfire though Europe. ^ Flanders was in a tumult. For 
seven days riot raged through the streets of Bruges. There were 
traitors among the people ; neither life nor property was safe. At 
last the dead count's chamberlain, Gervais, succeeded in organ- 

' Galbert de Bruges, c. 5. 

^Ibid., c. 4. But see Giesebrecht, IV,, 417, who thinks the movement not 
so spontaneous as Galbert's account indicates, r/! Otto of Friesing, VII., 17. 

3 This is no exaggeration. " Cum tam gloriosi principis martirium vita 
suscepisset, terrarum universi habitatores infamia traditionis ipsius perculsi, 
nimis indoluerunt, et mirabile dictu, occiso consule in castro Brugensi, in mane 
unius diei, scilicet feriae quartae, fama impiae mortis ejus in Londonia civitate, 
quae est in Anglia terra, secundo die postea circa primam diei perculit cives, et 
circa vesperam ejusdem secundae diei Londunenses turbavit, qui in Francia a 
nobis longe remoti sunt ; sicut didicimus per scholares nostros, qui eodem 
tempore Londuni studuerunt, sic etiam per negotiotores nostros intelleximus, 
qui eodem die Londoniae mercaturae intenti fuere. Intervalla ergo vel tempo 
rum vel locorum predictorum nee equo nee navigio quispiam transisse tam 
velociter poterat." — Galbert de Bruges, 22. Cf. Robert de Torigni, Mon. Germ. 
Hist. SS., VI., 488. An account of the judicial duel, the plot of Bertulf and 
his nephews, and a detailed relation of the murder of Charles the Good will 
be found in Galbert de Bruges, cc. 7-15. 

The following note of M. Pirenne (Edition of Galbert de Bruges, 75, note 
7), I quote entire; it explains itself : "On ne peut admettre avec M. Molinier 
(ed. de Suger, p. iii, n. 2) que Louis VI. ait €\.€ de connivance avec les assas- 
sins de Charles ; sa conduite prouve precisement le contraire. D'aileurs il est 
inexact que Charles fiit allie au roi d'Angleterre depuis plusieurs annees deja en 
1 127. En 1126, il avait pris part avec un contingent de troups a I'expedition 
du roi de France en Auvergne (Suger, pp. 108-110). II est vrai que Charles 
abandonna la politique systematiquement hostile de Baudoin VI. vis a vis de 
I'Angleterre ; mais cette conduite prudente et d'accord avec les interests de la 
Flandre (See Norman Conquest, V., 187, — J. W. T.) ne peut avoir pouss^ 
Louis VI. a tremper dans le crime de Bertulf et de ses neveux. Un poeme 
anonyme sur la mort de Charles (De Smet, Corp. Chron. Flander., I., p. 79) 
commence par les mots : 'Anglia ridet, Francia luget, Flandria languet.'' " 



I02 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

izing the popular fury. The murderers and their accomplices 
shut themselves up in the burgh ^ of the town (March 9, 1127.) 
A regular siege was now began. The men of Bruges were rein- 
forced by those of Ghent bringing arms and instruments of siege.' 
For ten days it was prolonged. Then the court yard of the 
castle was forced and the imprisoned conspirators retreated to the 
church (March 19). Thence they were driven by the maddened 
populace to seek cover in the tower. The sacred character of 
the edifice did not protect it. Not a shred of the interior furni- 
ture remained. In the meanwhile Louis VI. had arrived at Arras,^ 
(March 8, about) whence he sent greeting to the princes and 
barons of the siege, assuring them that he would come as soon as 
a new count was elected."* This was imperative, not only for the 
peace of Flanders, but in order to avoid complications of a graver 
sort. The chief competitors were Thierry of Elsass^ and William 
of Normandy,* the Clito. But a swarm of other candidates arose, 
among whom were Thierry^ Count of Holland, Arnold,^ nephew 
of Charles the Good, and Baldwin IV.,' Count of Hainaut. 

' It is indispensable to understand the topography of the burgh. It was 
protected by a moat over which were four bridges. The walls were nearly 
sixty feet high and were flanked with towers. In the interior were various 
structures disposed about the court. These were the church of Saint Donatien; 
the house of the count, which was connected by a gallery with the church ; the 
school, the cloister, the refectory of the monks, and the house of the canonical 
prevot. See Galbert de Bruges, pp. 20, note 3 ; 49, note ; and the map oppo- 
site p. I. 

^Ibid.,c. ^0. 3/iJ?V., c. 47. ''Ibid. 

s He was cousin of Charles the Good and descended through the female 
line from Robert the Prison (1071-1093). See Galbert de Bruges, 3, note 3; 
76, note 4, 5. 

* The grandson of the Conqueror was a distant cousin of Charles the Good. 
— Ibid., 82, note 2. 

'' Thierry of Holland had least to claim to the succession. See the claim, 
Ibid. 56, note 5. 

^By Charles' sister Ingertha. — Ibid., 138, note 2. 

9 Grandson of Baldwin VI. Count of Flanders (1067-1070) and brother of 
Count Robert the Prison, who violently deprived his nephews of their rights. 
In the assembly at Arras, Baldwin asserted a claim founded on these events. — 
Ibid., 108, note 11. Freeman {Norman Conquest, V., 206) says that Henry I. 
of England was a candidate. He is surely in error. 



FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICS. 1 03 

Legitimacy pointed to Thierry of Elsass' or Baldwin of 
Hainaut.* Arnold was strong only in that the hearts of 
the bourgeois of Bruges were with him, 3 while the Count of 
Holland was a shallow pretender. The issue really was a contest 
between the king of England and Louis VL of France for control 
of the election. William of Normandy was a deadly enemy of 
his uncle \ hence Louis VL sought to promote an anti-Anglican 
alliance by securing him the countship of Flanders.'* It was no 
less the interest of Henry L to foil such a move. Neither Thierry 
of Elsass nor Arnold could be dangerous.^ The French king, 
however, had the advantage of being on the ground. In the 
meeting at Arras, whither Thierry of Elsass had sent his petition 
for election, he practically forced the election of his protege 
(March 23) upon the nobles of Flanders.^ Baldwin of Hainaut 
quitted the assembly in a rage, and at once formed a coalition^ in 
favor of Henry I. against the French king, which comprised 
Stephen of Blois, the duke of Louvain, Thomas de Couci, and 
William of Ypres.^ 

Meanwhile William Clito's election had been ratified by the 

'Galbert de Bruges, 108. Cf. Giry, Hist, de la Viile de Saint-Omer, I., 47 
and note 2. 

^ Ibid., supra. 

3 Galbert de Bruges, 108. 

Albid., 82, note 2; Suger, 112, note 4. 

s Galbert de Bruges, 147, note 2. Ibid., 76. 

*See Galbert's account (c. 52) of this meeting of the "principes Franciae 
et primi terrae Flandriarum." The whole account is a graphic picture of feudal 
manners, as many another touch of Galbert's is. {Cf. c. 56 and Waitz, VII., 
51 ff.). The French policy is clearly set forth. It is worth noticing that the 
territorial character of France comes out and that Louis le Gros is "Franciae 
imperator." See this dissertation, p. 109. 

7 Luchaire, Annales, No. 379, c. 

® William of Ypres was a veritable co7tdottiere of the twelfth century. He 
was a natural son of Philip de Loo, son of Robert the Frison. He was hated 
by the Flemings for his cruelty. He organized a hireling troop under the name 
of Braban9ons, and was in the service of Henry I. After Henry's death (1135), 
Stephen used him to promote the anarchy of his reign, and rewarded him with 
the county of Kent. In 11 55, Henry II. expelled him from England. He 
died ten years later in his native country. See Galbert de Bruges, passif/i; 
especially pp. 35, note 2. 55 and note 4; 57 and note i ; 146, note 3. There 



I04 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

burghers of Bruges (April 2)/ and despite his unpopularity he 
had received the homage^ of the dead count's vassals (April 6). 
The new count sought to win the good will of all. To the clergy 
he granted immunities ; to the noblesse he abandoned the con- 
fiscated goods of the assassins and purchased the grace of the 
bourgeois of Bruges by a grant of privileges 3 (April 6), which 
Louis VI. confirmed a week later (April 14). To St. Omer he 
also granted a charter." 

In the interval the crowd, holding at bay the band in the 
tower of St. Donatien, had been resting on their arms. At last 
on April 12 the king and Count William began an attack upon 
the tower. The besieged retreated to the top,^ where for six days 
they successfully withstood every assault. Then Louis gave 
orders to sap the tower (April 18). The captives who had held 
out for forty- one days in all, now abandoned hope ; the foulness 
of their quarters, which were too narrow to allow all to recline at 
once, added to hunger and thirst, made them succumb (April 19). 
One by one they crawled through a window and descended by a 
rope.* But their sufferings were by no means at an end. Pend- 
ing the funeral of Charles the Good,^ which took place on April 
22, they were thrust into the dungeons of the castle.^ There 
they lingered in the darkness, dampness and stench for over two 
weeks. In the interval, Louis and Count William had been 
called to Ypres and thence to Oudenarde, on account of trouble 

is a memoir by De Smet. — Notice sur Guillaume d' Ypres et les Compagnies 
/ranches du Brabant et de laFlandre au Moyett-age. {Mem. Acad. Belg., t. XV.). 
On the employment of mercenary troops consult Boutaric, 240-2 ; Bibliothhque 
deVEcole de C/iartes, 111., p. 123,417; Giraud, Les roturiers au XLI^ siicle. 
Ibid., 1 84 1-2. 

^Galbert de Bruges, c. 54. Cf. Revue. d'Histoire et d'Archeologie, Brux- 
elles, i860, p. 113 ff. 

""Ibid., c. 56. Cf. Waitz, VII., 51 ff. Galbert's account is the fullest pre- 
sentation of this feudal ceremony extant. 

See abstract in Luchaire, Annates, No. 382. 

'^ Ibid., 55. The text of the charter is in Giry, Hist, de St. Omer, 52 ff. 
Luchaire, Annates, 384, has an abstract of it. 

s Galbert de Bruges, c. Ixiv. 

"See details, Galbert de Bruges, cc. 73-5; Suger, 112. 

T Ibid., c. 76. ^ Ibid., c. 74. 



FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICS. 105 

created by William of Ypres, who was apprehended and impris- 
oned in Lille. They did not return until May 4 to Bruges.' 
Then followed an act on the part of William, and sustained by 
Louis VL which ultimately cost the count-regnant his title and 
destroyed for France the balance she had secured in Flanders, 
against England. The defenders of the tower were condemned 
without form or process, practically by m.artial law, and hurled 
one after another, eight and twenty in all, from the coping of 
the tower which had for so long been their prison-house (May 
S)."" On the day following Louis VI. quitted Flanders for 
France. 

An investigation of the conspiracy against Charles and an 
attempt to apprehend the parties guilty of plundering the 
palace, followed this summary execution. William's conduct 
was a grave political blunder. The whole affair was an assertion 
of martial law, and on the lines upon which it was carried out, 
was an usurpation of the jurisdiction of the local echevinage, 
and alienated a class powerful by virtue of wealth, position 
and long-acquired authority. Moreover, it was a direct viola- 
tion of a privilege he had himself so shortly before accorded 
the men of Bruges. ^ This state of feeling was aggravated 
still more by an effort on his part to exact the tonlieu of the 
burghers" which excited popular antagonism, culminating in 
the revolt of Lille followed by other towns in Flanders, and 

' Galbert de Bruges, cc. 78-9; Suger, 113-4. 

^Ibid., c. 8r, and p. 125, note 2. 

'i Ibid., cc. lxxxvii.-viii. and notes. The charter given to St. Omer (Ait. I.) 
recognizes this local jurisdiction; it is by inference, however, that the priv- 
ilege is extended to Bruges. — Ibid., p. 96, note. 

^ Ibid., c. 88. "Dans I'affaire du tonlieu de Bruges, Guillaume de 
Normandie devait necessairement se prononcer en faveur de la noblesse. Ayant 
avant tout besoin de soldats pour resister aux adversaires que lui suscitait la 
politique anglaise, il ne pouvait meconter les chevaliers. Les necessit^s poli- 
tiques le forcerent done, comme un peu plus tard les empereurs de la maison de 
Hohenstaufen en Allemagne, a agir contre les villes pour conserver I'appui de 
la noblesse. Guillaume n'avait d'ailleurs abandonn^ le tonlieu aux Brugeois 
que pour assurer son Election. Mais en realite cette concession etait exorbitante. 
Apres la mort de Guillaume, Thierry d'Alsace se garda de la renouveler." — M. 
Pirenne, in Galbert de Bruges, p. 132, note 5. 



I06 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

the expulsion of William/ The repose following his accession 
had been momentary. The misconduct of the new count and 
the intrigues of the king of England, who still plotted for 
Thierry of Elsass once more made Flanders the theatre of fierce 
turmoil. Thierry of Elsass reappeared in Bruges and was elected 
count of Flanders by the burghers of Bruges and Ghent (March 
30, 1128).^ Again an assembly was convoked at Arras, but the 
sturdy burghers refused to go (April lo).^ Again Louis VI. and 
the English king were at swords' points. Once more Flanders 
was torn by civil war. The Clito returned from the siege of 
Bruges (May 29).'* Louis was defeated under the walls of Lille 
(May 21) and forced to fall back upon France which Henry I. 
was invading^ (June-July), when under the walls of Alost (July 
27) death ended the career of William Clito, the man whom for- 

^ Galbert de Bruges, cc. 93-8. 

^Ibid., cc. 102. 

3 Their response is an amazing declaration of independence. One under- 
stands in reading their rejoinder whence the spirit came of tlie men who wres- 
tled upon the dikes of Holland against the thraldom of Spain and fought in the 
trenches with Maurice of Nassau : Notum igitur f acimus universis, tam regiquam 
ipsius principibus, simulque presentibus et successoribus nostris, quod nihil per- 
tinet ad regem Franciae de electione vel positione comitis' Flandriae si sine 
herede aut cum herede obiisset. Terrae compares et cives proximum comitatus 
heredem eligendi habent potestatem, et in ipso comitatu sublimahdi possident 
libertatem. Pro jure ergo terrarum, quas in feodum tenuerit a rege, cum 
obierit consul, pro eodem feodo dabit successor comitis armaturam tantum- 
modo regi. Nihil ulterius debet consul terrae Flandriae regi Franciae, neque 
rex habet rationem aliquam, ut potestative seu per coemptionem seu per pre- 
tium nobis superponat consulem, aut aliquem preferat. Sed quia rex et comites 
Flandriae cognationis natura hactenus conjuncti stabant, eo respectu milites et 
proceres et cives Flandriae assensum regi prebuerant de eligendo et ponendo 
illo Willelmo sibi in consulem. Sed aliud est prorsus quod ex cognatione 
debetur, aliud vero quod antiqua predecessorum Flandriae consulum traditione 
ac justitia examinatur instituta. — Galbert de Bruges, chap. cvi. But consult 
the editor's commentary, note. M. Luchaire {^Inst. Mon., II., 24-25) says of 
this that, " La royaute recevait ainsi une veritable lefon de droit feodal." It 
seems to me that it is more than this. It implies a quasi self-consciousness, 
an idea of the unity of one people of one blood under one government, and 
that to be their own. 

''Ibid., c. 112. 

5 Henry of Huntingdon, p. 247. 



FOREIGN FOLIC Y AND FO LI TICS. i o 7 

tune had never favored.' Thierry of Elsass, whose popularity 
already had installed him in the popular heart, by the mutual 
consent of Henry I. and Louis VI. was invested with the title of 
Count of Flanders^ and regranted^ the concessions made by the 
grandson of the Conqueror." It was not even a Pyrrhic victory 
for the French king;^ he had been checkmated in every move by 
his astute English rival.* Only one thing was secured — the 
boon of peace.' 

The territorial aggrandizement of France during the reign of 
Louis VI. was insignificant until his last year. He saw rightly 
that the extension of sovereignty depended upon the means of 
exercising that sovereignty;^ therefore, with the melancholy 
exception of Flanders,' he limited his activity to the field in 

'On the death of William Clito, see Galbert de Bruges, c. cxix. 

■2 Ibid., c. 102. 

3 Ibid., c. 122. 

"t There is a good account of this episode in Giry, Hist, de la Ville de Saint 
Omer, I., c. vi., sees. 1—4. 

5 Thierry did not do homage to Louis VI. according to Ord. Vit., XII., 45, 
until 1 132. It is an interesting fact that the speech of the burghers of Bruges 
was pleaded relative to the right of suzerainty between the kings of France and 
the counts of Flanders as late as the time of Louis XI. — Galbert de Bruges, 
176, note. 

* Luchaire, Annales, Nos. in loco, has a detailed account of the history, so 
far as it pertains to Louis le Gros. See also Introd., pp. xcv-cii. 

^ Ex chronica mauriniacensi, H. F., XII., 72. Tunc misericordia Dei 
super Franciam respiciens, perfectissimam concordiam inter eos misit ; et capita 
seditionis extincto, quietis securitas agricolarum pectora laetificavit. 

*"Le progres territorial s'accomplissait parallelement au progres poli- 
tique." — Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 260. 

5 In the case of Flanders, it must be said, that there were extenuating cir- 
cumstances. Louis VI. was not weak as a suzerain, nor was Henry I. strong 
in his own strength, with reference to Flanders. Henry's advantage lay in the 
fact that he espoused the candidate whom the people wanted. The moral 
opposition of the Flemings defeated Louis VI. more than sheer force of arms. 
And even in Flanders Louis VI. did not wholly depart from his policy. Hermann 
deTournai (M.G. H.,SS. xiv., 294) distinctly says that he cast aside for pruden- 
tial reasons, the countship of Flanders either for himself or for his sons : — Et 
quia plures filios habebat, et uni eorum Flandriam daret, suggerebant. Sed 
rex, ut vir prudentissimus, considerans nullum filiorum suorum adhuc esse duo- 



io8 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

which it was possible for him to be efficient. Acquisition was 
confined to repairing, either by annexation, confiscation or sub- 
jugation, the breaches in the frontier. Besides the commune of 
Dreux,' he had strengthened the border in other places. The 
districts Louis redeemed from local tyrannies were attached 
to the territory of the crown as counties or chatellanies. Mont- 
Ihery, Rochefort, Ferte-Alais and the lands of Hugh de Puiset 
were united to the crown as the county of Corbeil.* Cases like 
this afforded Louis VI. an invaluable opportunity to establish 
a local government free from the taint of tradition.^ The 
G§.tinais was increased by Yevre-le-Chatel and Chambon, 
bought of Foulque, and strongholds were erected at Montchauvet, 
Gres, Moret, le Chatellier, Janville and Charlevanne, to insure 
peace along the margins of the royal domain," as Montlheri, 
Ferte-Alais, le Puiset and Chateaufort gave tranquillity to Orlean- 
nais and the region of Etampes. Such acquisitions, though 
acquired by means recognized by feudal law, were, however, held 
by royal tenure and hence tended to the homogeneity of the 
realm.s By being faithful over a little — by being faithful to the 
ancient patrimony of the Capetians, Louis VI. made it possible 
for Philip Augustus and St. Louis to be rulers over much.^ Even 

dennem nee sine magistro qui ei jugiter adhaereret, tam indomitam posse regere 
gentem, et ei se non posse semper esse praesentem ; timens ne aliquid exinde 
mali eis contingeret, altiori consilio refugit aliquem ex eis terrae proeficere. 

^ All that is known of Dreux is grouped in Luchaire, Inst. Mon,, II., 6, 
note. 

* II avait fallu vingt ans au pouvoir royal pour eteindre les petites tyran- 
nies locales de Montlhery, de Rochefort, de la Ferte-Alais, du Puiset, et pour 
rdunir a la couronne leurs possessions territoriales, aussi que le comte de Cor- 
beil. De toutes ces seigneuries, celle de Montlhery etait la plus importante et 
elle s 'accrut encore de terres et de fiefs appartenant a des arriere-vassaux 
entratnes dans la revoke de leur suzerain. — Vuitry, I., 185. The pr^vot^s of 
Corbeil, Montlhery, Saint Leger and Yveline, which figure in the account of 
1202 are of this origin. 

3 Luchaire, Manuel, 265. 

4 Luchaire, Inst. Mon., II., 260-1. 

S"Le domaine royal s'agrandit au moyen de contrats propres au regime 
fdodal, tenant moins du droit public que du droit priv^," i. e., the right of the 
king. — Vuitry, I., p. 21. 

* " Philip reared the structure of government on foundations already laid. 



FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICS. 109 

as it was, so imposing was his reputation among the princes of 
Europe that in the second year of his undivided rule (1109) 
Raymond-Berenger III., the Count of Barcelona, implored his 
succor against the Saracens of Spain;' and Bohemond of 
Antioch thought he was strengthened in the eyes of the Infidel 
because he had married the sister of the King of France (1106).* 
But the theory of the Middle Ages which regarded the empire as 
an international power, went farther than the name of king, and 
sometimes attributed to Louis VI. even the imperial title itself.^ 
Such ascription, however, was evanescent. The growing unity of 
France shunned a title which implied so little nationality. In its 
stead the royal prestige found expression in the title of "Most 
Christian King," which, from the time of Louis le Gros, is gen- 
erally attached to the princes of the Capetian house.'' 

A developer rather than an innovator, his reign brought into bloona the germs 
vifhich had come into being under Louis VI ... . and vs^hich the chill and 
feeble rule of Louis VII. could not destroy." — Walker, 144. 

' Luchaire, Annates, No. 73 ; Petit, Hist, des Dues de Bourgogne, I., 291-2 ; 
H. F., xii., 281. 

""Tanta etenim et regni Francorum et domini Ludovici preconabatur 
strenuitas, ut ipsi etiam Saraceni hujus terrore copule terrerentur." — Suger, 23. 

3S0 Galbert de Bruges (c. 52) uses the words "secundum consilium regis 
Ludewici, Franciae imperatoris" (1127). In a charter of 1118 Louis VI. styles 
himself " Ludovicus .... Francorum imperator augustus " (Luchaire, Inst. 
Mon., IL, appendix 18, pp. 340-1, publishes the text in full.) M. Leroux in 
the Revue HistoriqueyXlAX. (1892), p. 255, Za Royaute fran^aise et le Saint 
Empire Romain, thinks that this innovation on the part of Louis le Gros was 
after 1 125, that is, after the death of Henry V. There is reason to think 
that France, in theory at least, during the Middle Ages, was considered a part 
of the Holy Roman Empire. When Odo II., Count of Blois and Champagne, 
was defeated by the first Salic emperor, the Capetian king had no ground upon 
which he could deny the right of the emperor to carry his victory over upon 
the soil of France. (Ranke, Franzosische Geschichte, Werke, VIII., p. 21.) 
Philippe le Hardi was an unsuccessful aspirant for the imperial crown (Langlois, 
Le Rigne de Philippe le Hardi, pp. 64-70.) M. Leroux, in the article cited, 
instances the French policy in Italy in the fourteenth century as showing the 
intention of French kings to attain the imperial dignity. Even as late as the 
sixteenth century (15 19), the same hope lingered in the breast of Francis I. 

4 It did not become an exclusive ascription of the French crown until the 
time of Louis XL Cf. Notice des MS., Acad, des Belles-Lettres, XXIX., p. 18. 



no DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

But no prestige of title could avail against the sterner reality 
of a foe upon the north of France. The disastrous results of his 
intrigues in Normandy taught Louis VI. that the security of France 
lay in a territorial counterpoise to the barrier duchy. The influ- 
ence of Suger had brought the grand fief of Blois-Champagne 
into the orbit of the king's influence in 1135.' Louis' position in 
the south was strong in the last years of his reign. The 
sire de Bourbon was his ally; the counts of Nevers and 
Auvergne were friendly, and Burgundy also was favorably 
disposed. Across the Loire lay the great duchy of Aquitaine 
with its numerous dependencies. Louis le Gros was the 
guardian of the young duchess Eleanor. ^ Destiny pointed to 
the union of France of the north and France of the south, in the 
marriage (24 July-i August, 1137) of Eleanor and Louis the 
Young, the heir to the crown. The annexation of Aquitaine 3 was 
the consummation of the reign of Louis VI.'' It doubled the 

'Suger, 151, note 3. Ord. Vit, V., 48. For the importance of this event, 
see Luchaire, Revue Historique, XLVII. (1888), p. 274, Louis le Gros et son 
Palatins: Annales, No. 559, and Introd. xcii. 

^ On the will of William of Aquitaine, see Acad, des Inscript., t. XLIII., 
p. 421. Consult also, Luchaire, Manuel, 217, d., and note 2. 

3 For the extent of Aquitaine, see Luchaire, Inst.Mon., II., 261-2; Lalanne, 
Diet. hist, de la France, in loc, says : Le duche d'Aquitaine dont Eldanore 
dtait heritiere, comprenait done les comtds de Poitiers et du Limousin avec la 
suzerainete de I'ancienne province eccl^siastique qui avait €X.€ I'Aquitaine 
secunde ; il s'etendait d'un cote sur la province d'Aucli, le duche de Gascogne, 
les comtes de Bourdeaux et d'Agen, et de I'autre sur la partie de la Touraine 
situee sur la rive gauche de la Loire. II etait suzerain de I'Auvergne, dans la 
province ecclesiastique de Bourges, autrefois I'Aquitaine secunde; mais les 
autres pays dependant de cette province relevaient des comtes de Toulouse, qui 
possedaient le Quercy, I'Albigeois, le Rouerque, le Gevaudan, le Velay — aussi 
quelques auteurs, pour distinguer ces deux parties de I'ancienne Aquitaine, ont 
donne le nom de Guyenne a celle dont les comtes des Poitiers ^taient dues. 
Cy. Vuitry I., 188. Hirsch, 15, is in error regarding Berry and Touraine. On 
the general subject, see Luchaire, Annales, Introd., cxi.-cxiv. The sources are 
numerous: Suger, 123 ff.; Ord. Vit., V., 81 £f. ; H. F., XII., 68; 83-4; 116; 
119; 125; 219; 409; 435, etc. 

4 At the next Christmas feast the king of what was really a new monarchy 
received his crown at Bourges .... Thus for one moment, as long as Louis 
and Eleanor remained man and wife, the lands south of the Loire became what 
they had never been before ; what, save for one moment of treachery {i. e., the 



FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICS. 1 1 1 

size of the realm and carried with it a direct control over Guy- 
enne, Saintonge and part of Poitou, with the suzerainty of Tou- 
louse and its affiliated group, Auvergne, lower Touraine and Berry. 
And yet the acquisition, grand as it was, was less advantageous 
than Louis VI. thought. He thought he saw the shadow of an 
Anglican domination lifted since the young Louis was now king, 
or suzerain, of all the lands from Paris to the Pyrenees. But 
Touraine and Toulouse, Berry, La Marche and a portion of 
Poitou were not integral parts of the realm ; they were more an 
embarrassment than an advantage.' The puissance of the mon- 
archy lay north of the Loire,^ where Louis VI. had ruled with firm 
hand for nearly thirty years. ^ Here was the core of the monarchy, 
the kernel of greater France, sound and solid. Louis le Grosdied 
ere he saw the complete fulfilment of his plans.'' Eleanor of 
Aquitaine was a queen before she set foot in Paris. ^ But when 
the ready brain and steady will were no more, neither the misrule 
of Louis VII. nor the fierce aggression of Henry Plantagenet 

fraudulent dealings of Philip the Fair and 'Edward I.), they were never to be 
again for three hundred years — part of the domain of the king of Paris. — Free- 
man, Norman Conquest, V., 276-7. 

' Luchaire, hist. Mo?i., II., 262. Consult also p. 22, note I. For the revolt 
of Poitiers, see Hist, dti Roi Louis VII., c. vi. ; Itist. Mon., II., 17 1-2; Giry, 
Atablisseinents de Rouen, I., 345-6. 

2 Pour la premiere fois, depuis la fondation de la dynastie, on avait vu se 
former et se grouper autour du prince un personnel de serviteurs intelligents, 
actifs et d^voues aux institutions monarchiques. Louis le Gros leguait a son 
fils, en meme temps que Suger et Raoul de Vermandois, des clercs experimentes, 
deja au courant des affaires de justice et de finances, et des chevaliers toujours 
prets a se ranger sous la banni&re du maitre. Les grands offices etaient entre 
les mains de families paisibles, dont la fidelite et I'obeissance ne faisaient plus 
doute. La curie, debarassee des elements fdodaux qui la troublaient, offrait 
enfin i la royaute I'instrument de pouvoir qui lui avait fait defaut jusqu'ici. On 
peut dire que le gouvemement capetien etait fonde. — Revue Hist., XXXVII. 
{188S), Luchaire, Louis le Gros et son Palatins, p. 277. 

3 " Dominium suum augens, pacem circumque superbos debellando refor- 
mans, xxx annis regnum Francia viriliter rexit." — Coniinuator of Aimo7i, H. F., 
XII., 123. 

4 Louis VI., died August i, 1137. Suger, 129-30. 

s Louis VII. entered Paris at the end of August 1137. Hist, du Roi Louis 
VII., 147, note 4. 



112 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

could undo the realm which almost he had created of his brain and 
fashioned of his hand. 

When Louis VI. became king in 1108, he was already a man 
of maturity and administrative experience. The domestic policy 
of his reign is of more importance than his foreign relations. A 
policy of concentration was imperative for France at that time, 
owing to external circumstances. In the twelfth century feudal- 
ism reached the acme of its intensity. The principle of division 
thereby prevailing estranged the crown from the members of the 
great feudal constellation around it. This state of affairs was 
really an advantage to the monarchy, for it afforded it oppor- 
tunity to strengthen itself at home, to develop itself intensively 
so that it could bear the shock of armed resistance when prepared 
to enter upon a wider field of achievement. To this work, which 
was destructive as well as constructive — for the power of the 
local baronage had first to be broken — Louis VI. brought the 
brain to plan, the will to dare and the energy to achieve. His 
position was one of difficulty. He was the heir of the accumu- 
lated sins, more of omission than of commission, of weaker rulers 
like Robert the Pious, Henry I. and Philip I. 

The realm was small ; the royal power dissipated ; the crown 
tarnished. Like the greatness of Alfred of England, the great- 
ness of Louis VI. must be measured by what he accomplished, of 
what he had to do. Louis devoted his life to the establishment 
of the crown in the regions of the He de France I'Orleannais, the 
Vexin and Picardy. His persevering and energetic conflicts, his 
little campaigns which were really hardly more than police 
expeditions, had thus an importance upon the future power of 
France far out of proportion to their appearance. 

Louis' appreciation of law, his readiness to modify existing 
forms or to convert feudal institutions into instruments of crown 
power, are evidence of his creative ability. Even when those 
ideas ran counter to the vaster purpose of the papacy, France and 
the French monarchy were his first devotion. His reign fell in a 
time likely to be jeoparded by the papacy. The Concordat of 
Worms left Rome free to turn her eyes to France, but the con- 



FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICS. 113 

duct of Louis in its dignity, firmness and promptness saved the 
French monarchy from humiliation. And so by the adaptation 
of means to feasible ends, by the conscientious performance of 
the duty that lay nearest, Louis VL from day to day gradually 
raised the crown from its ignominy, rid the kingdom of internal 
distresses, and strengthened the rods of royal authority, thereby 
leaving to his successors a solid center of repose, a sound core 
preserving those seeds of royal power and authority destined to 
blossom and bear fruit under the fostering watchfulness of Philip 
Augustus, St. Louis and Philip the Fair. 

The End. 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. 



James Westfall Thompson was born at Pella, Iowa, U. S. A., 
3 June, 1869 ; the second son of the late Rev. Abraham Thomp- 
son, a clergyman of the Reformed (Dutch) Church, and of Anna 
(Westfall) Thompson. His early education was received in the 
public schools of New York, and in the Rutgers Preparatory 
School, New Brunswick, N. J. He was graduated, with the degree 
of Bachelor of Arts, from Rutgers College, 22 June, 1892. He 
was matriculated in the Graduate School of the University of 
Chicago on 24 September, 1892, and was fellow in history, in 
that institution, 1893-5. 



^RD-94 



THE DEVELOPMENT 



FRENCH MONARCHY 

UNDER LOUIS VL LE GROS 

I I 08-1 I 37 



A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF ARTS 

LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE OF THE UNIVERSITY 

OF CHICAGO, IN CANDIDACY FOR THE 

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF 

PHILOSOPHY 



BY 
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